


Pixels

by purplehedgehogskies



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, NEW AND IMPROVED!!, Pixels 2.0, Rivals to Lovers, Video games? There's gaming?, also language, broganes, pining Keith to the extreme, rated m because they talk about sex but there's no sexual content, some pining Lance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2018-09-13 09:38:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 46,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9118075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplehedgehogskies/pseuds/purplehedgehogskies
Summary: Lance spends almost every Saturday afternoon at his favorite diner, The Universal, a space-themed restaurant tucked into a historical college town. There's an old arcade game in one corner of the diner and Lance is bent on beating the high score, but the same name has graced the top of the leaderboard for weeks.Keith has been working at the diner for months, and it's been nothing exciting, but switching shifts with the weekend busboy mixes things up more than Keith expects.(Pixels 2.0: Now with new scenes and chapters!!)





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is Pixels 2.0! New readers, welcome! Old readers, you'll notice some sizable changes, but it's still the same story at its core. I just really wanted to revisit this story and adjust it to the updated canon, so I hope nobody minds the new and improved version.

Lance whisked through a puddle, the tires of his bicycle sending water in all directions, splashing onto the toes of Pidge’s sneakers. Pidge scowled and moved to walk on the other side of Hunk, muttering something rude under their breath. Lance didn’t quite hear it—he was already yards away, riding in circles up and down University Drive as his friends walked slowly alongside—but he knew Pidge enough to know that what they said wasn’t friendly.

“Are you sure you should be riding that fast?” called Hunk from beneath his massive yellow umbrella. “I mean, I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure this weather calls for a bit more caution than that.”

Lance was riding back towards Hunk and Pidge now, laughing as he careened towards the curb and barely stopped in time.

“You _moron_ ,” said Pidge, this time heard loud and clear. “Are you trying to win yourself a trip to the ER?”

“No,” Lance said, leaning over his handlebars to grin at Pidge, who rolled their eyes and kept walking. He hopped off of his bike and into the river of water that had collected at the curb and sloshed through it, his long strides easily keeping up with Pidge’s small ones. “I’m trying to win myself the title of Coolest, Ballsiest, Handsomest Man on Campus.”

“And the award for _Stupidest Thing I’ve Ever Heard_ goes to…drum roll, please?” Pidge turned to Hunk, who attempted a drum roll with his free hand against his thigh. They nodded in thanks and continued dryly, “…Lance Fuentes and his very imaginatively named bicycle, Blue. Get it? Because it’s _blue_.”

“It’s a tragedy when your friends don’t recognize your greatness.” Lance made a sweeping gesture of dismissal, climbing back onto Blue. Behind him, Hunk barely stifled a laugh. “I heard that, Hunk, and it stings the sting of complete and utter betrayal.”

Lance rolled away, picking up speed as he got further from them. He reached the corner ahead and turned there, instead of doubling back like he had been. Lance executed the turn with just enough care that it wasn’t lame, and just enough reckless abandon that it still pumped adrenaline through his veins.

At the end of the block, Lance parked his bike outside the diner, chaining it to one of the historic lampposts that lined the streets of downtown Altea. This one boasted a banner for the museum and planetarium on campus, pointing tourists towards University Drive. He looked up at the sign and thought back to the day he and Hunk had gone to a planetarium show only to curl up in the back row for a nap, much to the presenters’ dismay.

Lance smiled at the memory and leaned against the front window of the diner to wait for his friends. He spared a glance inside, seeing that there were a few people scattered among the booths, but not enough to constitute a rush. It looked like the regular Saturday afternoon crowd, except for the students that didn’t want to walk through the rain to get from the campus to the diner.

And except for Lance, Pidge, and Hunk, who had not yet claimed their favorite booth by the fish tank in one corner of the restaurant.

Pidge was the first to appear from around the corner, and Lance waved. Pidge jogged ahead of Hunk, slightly out of breath by the time they reached Lance’s side. Hunk was close behind, ducking under the diner’s bright green awning and shaking out his umbrella.

Both of them had long since gotten used to Lance’s flair for the dramatic, and neither took his spiel about betrayal or his impatience to get ahead as an indication that he was actually upset. Pidge and Hunk were both aware that it would take a lot for them to actually upset him. Especially on a day like today, a Saturday, when his spirits were high, his stress level low, and his stomach anticipating a burger from their favorite diner.

The Universal was on the smaller side, tucked between a florist and a thrift shop. In a college town known for history walks and buildings that looked centuries old, it was a novelty; the only science fiction themed restaurant in the county, perhaps in the region. Like the comic shop down the street, The Universal’s patrons were mostly students, rather than locals or tourists. Since Lance had discovered the place last spring, he had been there almost every Saturday afternoon—first he had brought Hunk, who was his roommate, and then Pidge when they’d been assigned to Hunk and Lance’s workshopping group for Intro to Composition at the beginning of the semester.

When Hunk finally caught up to them, Lance leaned on the door to open it. Music that sounded like it had been pulled directly from an old space alien movie chimed throughout the diner for a few seconds, announcing their entrance. A head of silvery-white dyed hair popped up from behind the counter.

“My Paladins!” the manager called, making her way to the end of the counter so she could come out to properly greet them. There were at least two members of the wait staff present, but Allura always insisted on serving their table herself and she always gave their group a friends and family discount.

Allura was beautiful and charming and had loved them instantly; Lance’s favorite tutor in the Academic Services Dept. and Pidge’s brother were her close friends, so the trio was immediately subject to her blatant favoritism. Not to mention, she shared interests with them—Allura dabbled in computer science and cared deeply for good food, offering nourishment for their minds and bodies.

Lance thought it was a bit cheesy that she always called them her Paladins, in reference to the University of Altea’s mascot, but he liked a bit of cheese every once in a while. It was Pidge who thought it completely stupid, but they would never say anything for fear of hurting Allura’s feelings.

“You’re not afraid to hurt _my_ feelings,” Lance had proclaimed once, when it had come up during a study session. “What makes Allura special?”

“She’s actually a good person,” Pidge had said, without looking up from their textbook. “You’re a piece of garbage.”

Allura made her way gracefully towards them, meeting them at the table just as Pidge crawled across the bench to sit squished against the window. Lance folded his long limbs into the seat beside them, holding up his head with one hand as he smiled at Allura in greeting.

“Afternoon, princess,” said Lance, which always made Allura laugh brightly, like bells chiming on a foggy morning.

“How are your classes?” Allura asked, withdrawing a notepad from the pocket of her pink and blue apron, and a pen from where it was tucked into the perfectly shaped bun on top of her head. The chorus of responses she received were varied sounds, ranging from disgruntled to pleased.

Pidge was the only one really enjoying every class they were in, the nerd. Hunk was stressed but optimistic. Lance leaned back in his seat and tried not to think about the paper he had due on Monday, which he hadn’t even started thinking about yet.

Allura patted his shoulder encouragingly. “It’ll be all right. How about I get you guys some drinks? Pidge, ginger ale. Hunk, lemonade,” she gestured to each of them with her pen to confirm their usual orders, smiling and jotting it down when they nodded, “Lance, are you feeling like today is a soda pop day or a milkshake day?”

“A milkshake day,” Lance said, making finger guns in her direction. “Blue raspberry, extra cherries, extra whip. You know the drill.”

She laughed again before turning on her heel and heading back behind the counter. In a few minutes, she was back with their tray of drinks. She made pleasant conversation for a moment, mostly with Hunk, as Pidge was gazing sternly at the menu and Lance was sucking up his milkshake through one of the diner’s special alien straws.

“Okay, I think I know what I want,” Pidge announced, folding their menu. “A grilled cheese and a short stack of chocolate chip pancakes, please.”

“The usual, got it,” said Allura, her pen gliding across the order slip. “Lance, are you getting your usual? UFO burger, everything on it?”

“Right on,” said Lance. Pidge elbowed him sharply to stop him from doing the finger guns again.

Hunk was the only member of their friend group whose order changed regularly, but he had decided after Allura had left to get their drinks and didn’t need any more time to deliberate. “I’ll have the chicken Caesar wrap with onion rings, please,” he said, folding his menu and tucking it back behind the napkin dispenser. “Thank you.”

“Sounds good,” said Allura, tucking her pen back into her hair. “Shouldn’t be too long.”

As they waited for their food, Hunk and Pidge played tic-tac-toe on a napkin. Lance finished his milkshake and left the whipped cream and cherries in the bottom of the glass for later.

“Holler when the food comes,” he said, sliding out of the booth and walking across the diner to where a single vintage arcade game stood in the corner. _Voltron: Defenders of the Universe_ was all pixelated graphics and outdated sound effects, but Lance loved it—both for the game itself and for the fact that it gave him something to do while waiting. Not that he didn’t like to sit with Pidge and Hunk, but he was notoriously impatient and overenergetic, and he knew they didn’t really mind if he walked off to play Voltron in the corner.

Lance plugged his name into the machine, each letter beeping as he selected it, and chose the same lion that he always played with. He hunched over the controls in anticipation as the game loaded, ready to finally beat the highest score—he’d been trying for weeks, and he hadn’t seen the top score of 9,005 change in a while, so Lance was sure that he had a real chance of winning today.

Lance skipped past the intro, which he’d sat through the first time he’d played, and the tutorial he’d ignored from day one; Now that he was a seasoned fighter he went straight into battle, no questions asked. As soon as the screen flashed _GO!_ he began slamming buttons, shooting at the tiny purple blips on the screen that were meant to be Galra fighter jets, part of an empire that was trying to take over the entire universe.

As he went, he tried not to watch the score counter in the corner, tallying up the number of Galra fighters he shot down and the bonus crystals he collected. Instead, he watched his health bar and his lion as it flew back and forth across the screen. His score was around 8,000 by the time he heard Pidge call his name from across the restaurant, but he was too close to leave it there. A cold burger was a slim price to pay for beating the stupid legendary high-scorer, whose name had been at the top of the board since Lance’s first time at The Universal.

The next time Pidge called his name, they sounded significantly more impatient, but Lance didn’t care. It was just him and the blue lion now, and he was almost there, just a few more ships to shoot down….

A larger purple dot flew on screen, and it withstood more of Lance’s shots than any of the other ships could. He killed it before it could get him, but the next one wasn’t so easy—it fired and Lance didn’t have time to dodge out of the way, didn’t have time to kill it before it killed him. His health was so low already, and the bigger Galra fighters had deadlier weapons.

_GAME OVER_ blinked on the screen in purple, but below the declaration was his name and score in brilliant blue. He couldn’t believe it—he had been defeated, as he always was, but with 9,025 points. It was higher than he’d ever scored, higher than he’d needed to score to beat the record.

Lance clicked impatiently, anxious to get to the leaderboard, the thrill of victory coursing through him as the screen loaded.

Wait. He was still second. How could he still be second?

The same name he had always seen at the top was still there, taunting him with red letters—the score? 10,000 points. _Keith_. Lance didn’t know who Keith was, but he felt their rivalry deep in his bones. It was as if the world had pitted them against each other, and only one could come out victorious. For some reason, it was always Keith.

Lance backed away from the game as if it had betrayed him. He dimly registered that Hunk was calling him over now, that it had probably been several minutes since the food had showed up, but all he could think about was how this mysterious, legendary Keith kept besting him.

Lance finally headed back over to his table, his hands buried in his pockets. Hunk looked up at him when he arrived, smiling with as much sympathy as he could muster. It was, after all, just a game.

“Maybe you’ll get it next time,” said Hunk. Lance sighed and sunk into his place beside Pidge, lifting one hand to pick at a French fry, but the rest of his body was still eternally pouting.

“I was so close!” he complained. “Last week it was nine thousand, right? So I beat nine thousand today. But now, now he’s fucking scored _ten thousand_!”

Pidge stared at him as they took a bite of their grilled cheese. “Okay, but really,” they said. “Is it really such a travesty that you can’t eat? You talk about that burger all week, don’t tell me you’re going to not eat it just because of some _game_.”

Lance sat up and pointed a finger at Pidge. “You. You are mostly right. But you’re wrong about it being just a game.”

“Oh, here we go,” said Pidge. Hunk laughed around a mouthful of onion ring.

“It is a relic of gaming culture and science fiction. To big time collectors, that thing is worth an entire human arm, Pidge.” Lance gestured wildly in the direction of the game. “Not to mention, it’s all about defending the universe from galactic imperialism.”

“Galactic imperialism, eh?” Pidge sounded vaguely amused. “Those are big words.”

“Fight me, Pidge,” he said.

“I would…but fighting me requires a score of at least ten thousand. I’m like the boss of the level.”

Lance picked up his burger and started eating, making sure to chew angrily in Pidge’s direction. Pidge looked up from their pancakes, peering over the rims of their glasses disapprovingly. Pidge looked at Lance disapprovingly often, as if Lance was petty mortal scum and Pidge a supreme higher being, but all it took to dispel that notion was the memory of Pidge curled up in Hunk’s yellow beanbag chair, completely passed out at eleven because they were practically still an elementary schooler.

Despite his disappointment over his score, Lance still enjoyed the meal with his friends, as usual. He wasn’t sure anything could completely ruin an afternoon spent at The Universal. It couldn’t match the sights and smells of his mother’s cooking or sitting in the basement with his father among shelves of collector’s items, where he’d started learning English from old sci-fi television. But the diner reminded of these little bits of his home—in Cuba and in the US—which was enough to fill him with warmth for the rest of the day. By the time he had finished his burger, Lance was no longer disgruntled but wonderfully content, leaning on his arms on the table and smiling lazily at Hunk as he talked about an upcoming lab in his physics class.

It was one of those moments where Lance was completely caught up in listening to his friends talk about things that excited them, struck by how happy he was to see them happy.

“Are you done?” asked a voice at Lance’s shoulder. Lance turned his head to see the telltale plastic bin of a busboy, but it wasn’t the busboy he was used to. He craned his head back, looking into the frowning face of a kid his age with a mop of black hair and a stretched-out grey t-shirt. He seemed vaguely familiar, like Lance had seen him around campus, but never around the Universal.

“With this?” Lance picked up his plate. “Yeah.”

He moved to put it into the busboy’s bin, but the guy intercepted it.

“I can do it,” he said flatly. Lance let go, pulling his hands back and holding them up as if in surrender.

“Okay,” he said. He thought he’d been helpful all the times he’d done the same thing with Coran’s scrawny nephew, but apparently this new guy—he was new to Lance, anyway—didn’t care for that. But Lance still remembered to be polite and added, “Thank you.”

“Yeah,” said the busboy, almost bitterly. Lance huffed softly, hoping that only his friends picked up on it. He hated to be _that_ customer; Lance normally didn’t object to making a fuss, but giving customer service workers grief was where he drew the line. He watched the kid clear away Hunk’s plate and his two empty glasses before reaching for Lance’s tapered milkshake glass.

Lance scooted it towards himself, grinning to hide the millisecond of panic that had struck when the busboy almost took the one dish he wasn’t quite finished with. As a bonus, the smile helped to mask how the busboy’s temperament made him feel—startled and a little hurt.

“Sorry,” said Lance. “I save the whipped cream for last.”

“Whatever.” He reached beyond Lance to take an empty glass and one of Pidge’s plates. As he did, his handwritten nametag was suddenly directly in Lance’s line of sight. Smudged black sharpie spelled out a name Lance was used to seeing in pixels.

“You’re _Keith_?” Lance sputtered, forgetting all notions of politeness. His competitive streak apparently ran deeper than the courtesies that his mother and grandmother had drilled into him every time they’d gone out when he was a kid. “Oh, man, you sneaky bastard.”

Keith pulled back from the table, dropping the plate into his bin with a clatter. He leveled Lance with a look that was almost a glare.

“Excuse me?” he asked, his tone sharp. “Do I know you?”

“Ummm, yes. I’m Lance,” he said, placing his hand on his chest. “We’re bitter rivals. I try valiantly to beat the Galra every weekend, but _you_ best me every time. You’re a lot less smug in person than on the leaderboard, you know.”

“What.”

“Voltron,” he said, gesturing towards the game. “We are _defenders of the universe_ , Keith, how could you forget? And you just out-defend me all the time! What gives?”

“I know what Voltron is, and I know I have the high score,” said Keith. “What I don’t get is how it’s my fault that you can’t beat me.”

“We’re sorry,” Pidge interrupted, looking up at Keith. “He’s the most ridiculous human being on this earth, I don’t know why we bring him out in public.”

“He seems like quite the burden. You’re Pidge, right?” asked Keith. “Sorry, we haven’t really met, have we? Uh, I live with Matt. And Shiro. There’s a picture of you and your brother on our fridge, so I recognized you.”

Pidge pushed their glasses up their nose and nodded. “Yeah, that’s me. Nice to meet you, Keith.”

Lance’s mouth had dropped open at some point during the exchange, and he wasn’t sure he would be able to close it ever again.  He looked frantically between Pidge and Keith, then at Hunk as if he might have some sort of input, and then back to Pidge again. Noticing this, Pidge slid their eyes over to Lance.

“What? Keith is a common enough name,” said Pidge.

“If you’re done with…all this,” Keith motioned to Lance’s face, presumably referring to his expression and behavior and general Lance-ness, “I have other tables to bus.”

“Fine, _Mullet_ ,” Lance said, running with the first comeback he came up with. Pidge leaned down and pressed their face against the table. Hunk looked apologetically at Keith. Lance leaned back in his seat and folded his arms, trying to appear as cool as possible. “Go get a haircut, while you’re at it.”

Keith walked off without saying anything.

“Not gonna lie man, that was pretty embarrassing,” Hunk said, dunking an onion ring into a puddle of ketchup. “I mean, for you, mostly. And apparently Pidge—I think you broke them.”

Pidge lifted their head from the table. “Why am I friends with you?”

Lance dipped his spoon in the whipped cream at the bottom of his glass, scooping up one of the many cherries hidden in the pile. The heat of rivalry in his blood subsided as the offender, Keith, disappeared into the back of the diner with his dumb hair, stupid face, and his beige plastic bin. Lance shrugged, deciding to let the whole affair roll right off of him, like water off a dolphin’s back.

Pidge watched, unamused, waiting for some kind of answer.

“Because I’m unbelievably charming,” he said. “And I’m buying you lunch.”


	2. Chapter 2

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” said Lance, his hands wrapped around the sides of the control panel, white-knuckled with how tightly he gripped it. “Ten thousand and one. _Ten thousand and one?!_ ”

Lance heard the clatter of dishes against plastic behind him and whirled. Keith stood at the nearest booth, his bin braced against his hip in a way that somehow conveyed _attitude_. Lance thought perhaps it was the combination of this posture, the smirky tilt of his mouth, and his obviously calculated timing. It was deeply frustrating, whatever it was, and made Lance want to crash his head through the screen of the game cabinet and put an end to the crescendo of emotion that he felt.

“You did that on purpose,” Lance said instead, shaking an accusing finger at Keith, who shrugged dismissively. “Stop that, I know when I’m being sassed.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Keith asked, beginning to move past Lance and towards the swinging door that led to the back of the diner. Lance felt the slight brush of Keith’s sleeve against his and could just barely feel Keith’s breath on his neck as he spoke. “Says the guy in second place.”

If the competition wasn’t so high, so adrenaline and drama fueled, it’d send a shiver down his spine. But Lance rejected that on principle. He reeled back, gesturing at Keith’s receding figure.

“Just you wait, buddy. I’ll beat you. I’ll beat you _good_.”

Keith looked over his shoulder as he pushed the kitchen door open. The flicker of determination in his eyes and the set of his jaw made Lance bristle—the smug, smirky bastard.

“Oh, will you?” Keith’s smirk spread just enough to become a smile. Lance huffed, turning and heading back to his table, ignoring the way Keith laughed as he headed in the opposite direction, into the kitchen.

“He didn’t touch my milkshake, did he?” asked Lance as he sat back down in the booth beside Pidge, with such force that the whole bench shook a little and the cushion squeaked beneath him.

“No. He remembered you like to save it,” said Hunk. “Isn’t that kind of nice?”

“Ugh, no. He’s not nice,” Lance grumbled, his attention turning to the half-eaten burger on his plate that he had abandoned in favor of Voltron. He jabbed a whole in the top bun with one finger; when withdrawn, it was covered in ketchup and mustard. “Can you believe it? He scored ten thousand and one just to _fuck with me_.”

“What did you get?” asked Pidge.

“Nine thousand fifty.”

Lance sucked the condiments off of his fingertip, caught Keith’s eye across the restaurant again, and sneered. He picked up his burger and bit into it angrily, his eyes tracking Keith as he moved behind the counter, wiping the surface down with a rag.

“Oooh. Yikes. You have a lot of catching up to do, don’t you?” they said. “That’s _hundreds_ of points.”

Lance stopped chewing his mouthful of burger and glared at Pidge.

“What? It isn’t my fault that the truth hurts.”

Lance swallowed. He ate the rest of his meal in silence, and Hunk and Pidge resumed conversation without him. They were talking about 3D printing and his interest was piqued, but he didn’t have enough space in his head to contribute—instead, he was thinking about how he was going to mop the floor with Keith’s stupid mullet.

When he finished eating, he returned to the game in the corner and started up another campaign to shoot down every Galra in sight. When Keith went over to clear their table, Lance saw him laugh at something Pidge said, fidget with the collar of his shirt, point at the cover of Hunk’s physics textbook and say something, looking entirely pleasant and not at all devious. The only thing that made Lance turn away was the sound of the _GAME OVER_ screen in his ear, because he’d looked away for too long and the blue lion had taken too many hits.

Lance skipped looking at the leaderboard and popped another quarter into the coin slot.

 ****

Lance thrummed with energy when he waltzed into the diner the following Saturday, Pidge at his heels. Hunk had gone home to Wisconsin for the weekend, and Pidge had originally threatened not to join him for lunch because Lance was being annoying. Instead of bailing, though, they had agreed to go with one condition—one that was frustrating and puzzling and seemingly impossible, but Lance wasn’t about to back down from a challenge.

Allura was cleaning off the stools at the counter when the pair of them walked in, and she grinned at the sight of them. “Sit, sit, I’ll be with you in just a moment!”

Lance took the side of the booth Hunk normally sat at, stretching his entire lanky self across the seat and resting his head on the table. Pidge shook their head as they sat down across from him. Having finished her cleaning, Allura walked over to them and laughed brightly at the sight of Lance’s feet hanging off the edge of the booth.

“Lance, what are you doing?” she asked, tilting her head to look at him with amusement. “Where’s Hunk?”

“Cheeseland,” said Lance. He hauled himself up into a proper sitting position and smiled up at Allura. “He went back to _Waukesha_ , from whence he came. We miss him terribly.”

“Lance is in a particularly horrible mood today,” said Pidge from behind their menu. “And by that I mean he’s giddy and weird and behaving in a way that makes me feel like launching him into a dumpster.”

“You always want to launch me into a dumpster.”

“But I _extra_ want to launch you into a dumpster today,” Pidge said. They sighed and folded up their menu. “I guess it’s the usual, Allura. I am a person with simple tastes.”

“Usual for you, Lance?” asked Allura.

“Nah. It’s definitely a day for nice, refreshing Coca-Cola,” he said, snapping and pointing finger guns. Pidge kicked out in the direction of his legs but him missed by a hair. “Also, where’s Keith?”

“Keith? In the kitchen, I believe. Would you like me to send him out?” Allura said, tucking her pen and order pad into the pockets of her apron.

“No, that’s fine,” said Lance, drumming his hands on the surface of the table. Pidge gave him a look, and he gave them a look right back. “Just wanted to make sure he was here, that’s all. I’m sure we’ll cross paths. Anyway, I have universe defending to do.”

Lance slid out of the seat, but his long limbs betrayed him and he almost toppled onto the floor. That would’ve been a drain on his morale, especially if Keith had seen—he’d already seen Lance walk into the edge of a table in the library earlier in the week. He steadied himself and grinned before walking off.

“Aren’t you going to wait for your drink?” asked Allura. Lance smiled at her over his shoulder.

“Evil doesn’t wait for soda pop, so neither can I.”

He reached the game and cracked his knuckles, determined to catch up to Keith today. He’d stayed into the early evening last weekend, and Hunk and Pidge had headed back to campus without him—they’d wanted to stay, but he knew that both needed to get back, so he insisted that they go ahead. Some progress had been made before, and he was a mere 400 points away from reaching Keith’s score. Today would almost certainly be the day.

The score counter was at 9680 when he heard the unmistakable sound of Keith’s busboy bin, but Lance didn’t turn. He saw out of the corner of his eye that Keith was sitting in the booth nearby, watching the screen as Lance played. A larger Galra ship hit his lion as he tried to dodge, effectively draining his health to the bare minimum. It only took one smaller fighter jet to finish him off, and Lance let his head fall forward against the control panel with a loud groan.

“You’ve hit the third level, you know.”

Lance didn’t know, but when he looked over at Keith he smiled like he did. Keith stood up and ambled over, nudging Lance aside and pressing the button to skip past the leaderboard.

“You don’t pay attention to the tutorials, do you? You only play with the joystick?” Keith shook his head. “Listen, that’s just dodging and firing. You have to use the other controls, too.”

“I’ve never needed them.” Lance puffed out his chest. Keith wasn’t looking at him, instead waiting for the opening screen to load.

“Well, you do in level three,” said Keith, fishing a quarter out of his pocket and popping it into the slot. The options for new player and returning player appeared on screen, and Keith selected returning. Lance watched as he searched Lance’s name instead of his own. “Here, you’re gonna want to watch the tutorial this time.”

Keith walked off as the intro started playing, and Lance could see him talking to Pidge in his peripheral vision. Keith turned out to be right—there were controls that Lance had forgotten about, ones that only came into use after reaching the third level. There were tiny buttons that matched the colors of the lions lined up to one side of the joystick; it turned out that he had been able to call for backup and he’d never known how. There was also a button that let him switch lions for a limited time to get himself or a member of the team out of trouble.

Lance was at the countdown screen before he knew it, overwhelmed by the new information and hurriedly trying to fit it into his brain before the game started. Keith came back while he was soaring through to level 2, where the Galra ships got faster but were still tiny blips, where he was still a solo blue lion without the option to team up with the rest of the Voltron team. Like before, Keith waited quietly at the table while Lance played—out of courtesy or disinterest, Lance wasn’t sure. He just sat there, silently observing until Lance reached five thousand and flew into the third level, and his fingers started fumbling against the other lion buttons.

“Wait, wait,” Keith was standing and moving to Lance’s side, at the edge of his bubble, his hands against the control panel. “It’s the yellow. Press the yellow.”

“What? Why?” Lance demanded, scrambling to find the yellow button, concentrate on the game, and talk to Keith at the same time.

“The yellow is the other leg!” Keith was pointing wildly at the screen. “That ship is gonna kill you, Lance. Get the yellow lion.”

“Shut up, Mullet,” he gritted out, glancing away from the monitor to press the button with more intent, this time successfully calling the yellow lion onto the screen. The cluster of pixels that joined Lance’s lion started shooting at advancing Galra ships instantly; the smaller fleets went down faster, and the larger, more armored ships were easier to beat. The blue lion was fighting valiantly as the score counter went up, but Lance was so into the game that he didn’t notice when an additional digit appeared on screen or when the bottom corner said he was on level four. Lance was riding the high of the new controls and the new degree of exhilaration he felt when he used them. He was grinning at the game over screen regardless of his score.

“Lance, look,” said Keith. “Look at your score.”

“What?” he turned to Keith, a little breathless. He hadn’t realized, in the thick of the battle, that the busboy was standing at his side and their shoulders were brushing together—he’d been more invested in the game itself. Now, he shifted slightly out of the way and gaped at Keith.

“Your _score_ ,” Keith repeated, jerking his pointing finger for emphasis. There was a funny little smile on his face, not quite the smirk or scowl Lance had seen before, but something more like the way he’d smiled when he talked to Hunk and Pidge. “ _Lance_.”

He turned his head, blinking at the leaderboard. Lance’s name had reached the top with a score of 10,010. Keith’s name was below him, at last.

He let out a whoop that drew the attention of everyone in the diner.

“Lance.” Keith hid his face in his palm. This time when he said Lance’s name, it was mumbled, almost admonishing, much like Pidge’s tone whenever Lance said something particularly dumb. People said his name like that a lot—Lance had grown used to it. He was too thrilled to care.

“I beat ten thousand, Keith,” he cheered, his palms flat against the game’s screen as he stared in disbelief. He bounced on his toes and turned to Keith, grinning, overflowing with enthusiasm. “Take that, Galra scum! The universe is safe for another day!”

He was a second away from throwing his arms around Keith, rivalry be damned.

“You’re welcome,” said Keith, and there was the smirk. Lance drew back from the game, crossing his arms over his chest and eyeing the other with suspicion.

“Wait. Why would you help me?” he asked.

Keith wiped his hands nonchalantly on the apron tied around his waist, picked up his bin, took his time answering.

“Oh, it’s just no fun winning against someone who doesn’t even know how to use the controls, that’s all,” he said as he turned away. His tone was cool and unaffected as he headed towards a table near the door that had been recently vacated. “And, I mean, I’m just saying—I’ll probably be playing tomorrow, and the shift after that, and the shift after that…so, don’t get used to that spot at the top.”

Lance gasped, palm to his chest.

From their table on the other side of the diner, Lance could hear Pidge say, “Get rekt.”

He strode over, passing by Keith on his way, and poked Pidge on the forehead. They swatted his hand away, rubbed the spot he had poked, and made an angry sound of disapproval.

“You’re supposed to be on my side, you little pest,” said Lance, flopping down across from them in the booth. “Treachery. Treason. My heart can’t take it.”

“Um, speaking of,” said Pidge. “I distinctly remember that we made a deal before I came here with you.”

Oh. They had proposed the terms and conditions when Lance had walked up to Pidge’s floor and come to knock on their door—Pidge hated when he did that, because he flashed finger guns at their roommate and spewed cheesy lines whenever the poor girl opened the door instead of Pidge. Today, Pidge’s roommate had answered when he knocked and Pidge had said, with no shortage of salt, that the only way they would come would be if Lance promised to say something nice to Keith before leaving the diner.

Part of Lance recognized that it was because Pidge cared about Keith, and didn’t want Lance to go around challenging him all the time. Another part of him—the competitive, dramatic part—believed they had devised this plan jus to inconvenience Lance.

Foolishly, Lance had agreed anyway. _Challenge accepted._

He reached for his milkshake, directing the straw to his mouth and avoiding Pidge’s eyes. Pidge tore off a piece of their grilled cheese and ate it, still watching him, trying to hold him to it with the power of their gaze but failing in all attempts to hide their amusement.

Eventually, with a heavy sigh, Lance turned in his seat to look around the diner for Keith. Lance spotted him at the counter, among a battalion of shiny napkin holders, stuffing them with cheap sort of napkins bought in bulk. One of the servers was filling salt and pepper shakers beside him, keeping busy during another rainy-day lull.

Lance ate a few bites of his food before standing and striding over to the counter to stand in front of Keith. Intensely focused on the task at hand, Keith did not look up until Lance plucked a loose napkin from a pile and waved it in Keith’s face.

“Hey. Hey, Keith. Pay attention to me.”

“What?” Keith said, barely looking up from his task.

“I wanted to say thank you for, um, pointing out the other controls,” said Lance, and then he placed the napkin delicately on the crown of Keith’s mullet. “And also, uh…”

“Yeah?” Keith prompted, his voice much softer. When Lance looked at him, his eyes were focused intently on Lance, wide with surprise. They were a nice dark brown and they caught the light in a way that almost, _almost_ , looked like a deep shade of purple. Lance folded his hands in front of him, deciding that the comment on the tip of his tongue was a little _too_ nice, and Keith didn’t deserve it.

“I like your shirt,” he said simply. It was a red shirt today, newer-looking and better-fitting than those Lance had seen him wearing before. There was a pocket on the left side of his chest, where Keith had pinned his nametag.

“Oh, really?” Keith tugged at his collar. “Thank you. It’s new. A birthday gift, actually.”

“When was your birthday?” asked Lance.

“Oh, it’s tomorrow. Got it early because Nana—Shiro’s Nana, really—sends stuff early so it’s never late,” he said, smiling affectionately at the mention of Nana. “Once I got a gift from her in _September_ and my foster parents were so confused. Like, it wasn’t my birthday yet and this old lady they didn’t know was sending me shit. It was priceless.”

Lance knew some of the background about Keith, given that he spent so much time with Shiro. Many a tutoring session had turned into talking about Lance’s family, so Shiro had talked about his, too. He and Keith had been in the same foster home for a while, but Shiro’s grandparents appeared out of the woodwork and took custody while Keith was left in the system. Lance knew there was a lot more to the story than that, but the most important part was that they still considered themselves brothers, even though there was no paper or blood to bind them.

“My abuela sends packages late, though admittedly they take a little longer because she lives in Cuba,” said Lance. “But still, she sends them late. We’ve gotten our Christmas presents on Presidents’ Day. Oh, and once, my sister got a gift on my birthday—I was like eight, so it didn’t go over well _at all_.”

Keith laughed, and the napkin slipped off of his head. It fell into his hand and he looked at it, seemingly mystified.

“Well, uh. Happy birthday,” said Lance. He’d been leaning heavily on the counter and now pushed himself off of it, drawing himself back up and assuming his full height. He realized, gleefully, that Keith was shorter than he was. “Hey, I’m taller than you! Ha!”

“Yeah, Lance. But barely.”

“ _Barely_ is all it takes.” Lance pointed his finger guns at Keith before heading back to his seat, laughing over his shoulder. “See you around, shortstuff.”

When he returned to the table, Pidge gave him a look. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Lance’s boisterous mood dipped as he thought about how easy it had been, how much he’d enjoyed talking with Keith, how nice it had felt to catch his eyes and know that the smile on Keith’s face was there because of him.

“No,” he said. “It makes me kind of wonder why I thought it would be.”

Pidge shrugged and shoveled pancakes into their mouth.


	3. Chapter 3

Keith stood before the brightly painted gaming cabinet of _Voltron: Defenders of the Universe_ , part of him itching to play and another part resisting. He wanted to beat his own high score, and even more than that he wanted something to do while he waited. He wasn’t working, but Shiro had insisted on stopping by to pick up Allura—she wasn’t on the clock either, but there had been some sort of crisis that she’d needed to handle before leaving the diner in her assistant manager’s hands for the night. Now, Shiro and Allura were debating about some show they watched together and Keith was bored. Whenever they finally left The Universal, Keith would be kicked to the backseat on the drive to Allura’s house in Arusian Heights to finish setting up for her Halloween party that evening.

Keith would be bored there, too. He had his Nintendo DS in the car, and he planned on finding a quiet corner to play in for as long as Shiro insisted on staying. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be there—there would be food and cool music and some people he knew—the problem was just that there would also be people he _didn’t_ know.

For the time being, Keith was waiting. If he just played, there would be some kind of entertainment to distract him from his brother’s ranting and the pile of dirty dishes at the booth closest to him and his general impatience.

The part of Keith that resisted had stumbled into existence the weekend before, when he’d helped Lance make it to the top of the scoreboard. Lance had been so excited, his face breaking out in this brighter-than-anything grin, and Keith almost wasn’t embarrassed by the loud exclamation that followed. He wanted to see Lance like that again. The kid was ridiculous, and it was undeniable, but there was also this vibrancy to him that drew people in. His friends knew it, Allura knew it, and Keith was still feeling the warmth of it; he was a moth to flame.

But there was always the fact that playing again would give Lance another score to beat, another reason to get overcompetitive and overexcited. A reason for them to continue volleying banter, for them both to boast and tease and maybe, possibly, flirt a little bit. Keith knew he could set a higher high score, and he had, in fact, promised that he would.

So he pushed a quarter through the slot, selected returning player, and searched for his name. The option to start with a different lion than usual was presented, but Keith stuck to his brand and selected the red. He had tried playing with all of the others before, and red felt the fastest. On top of that, it was his favorite color.

He wondered if Lance’s favorite color was blue. His phone case was blue, Keith had noticed, and so was the baggy U of Altea hoodie he’d been wearing the last time he was in the diner, and so was his bike. Keith pushed away his thoughts about Lance and focused on the game, easily avoiding Galra fire as he shot down their ships. He collected every bonus crystal and power boost possible, making his way to the fourth level without really breaking a sweat. The green lion at his side, Keith scored almost 13,000 points before Shiro was clapping him on the back and asking him if he was ready to go.

“Yeah,” Keith said, letting his lion get hit by one of the larger Galra fighters, the pixelated red ship flickering off the screen. _GAME OVER._ “Yeah. I don’t suppose there’s any chance I can call shotgun?”

Shiro laughed and squeezed his shoulder in that bro way that Shiro did. “No, not really. Anyway, what’s this I hear about Lance beating your high score?”

“I let him. I have a new high score now, anyway,” said Keith, gesturing to the leaderboard that was now on the screen. “You know Lance?”

“Yes. Doesn’t everyone?” Shiro grinned. He began walking towards the door, Keith following alongside him. “I’m kidding. He’s one of the students I tutor. Good kid. Weird, yes, but good.”

“The weird part is right,” said Keith, his hands sinking into his pockets as he walked side by side with his brother. “I just met him, so.”

“Yeah, I thought so,” said Shiro. He turned his gaze to Allura when they reached the door, where she had been standing and waiting for them, looking lovely in her elaborate Daenerys costume. Shiro was still in scrubs from his clinicals—the pieces of his year-old zombie ensemble were stuffed into a plastic bag and tossed into the backseat as they left their apartment building. Keith was not wearing a costume at all. “I mean, if you’d known him longer maybe you would’ve actually talked about him to me, your bro, with whom you share _major developments_.”

There was weight in that statement. An implication that Keith wasn’t expecting to hear from his brother, who knew nothing about all that had happened with Lance so far. Unless Allura had been spying across the diner. Keith frowned.

“Hey, I was joking! But if you ever need a wingman…”

Keith didn’t dignify that with a response, pulling the door open with a sharp yank and not lingering to hold it open for them. He started across the street as Shiro and Allura laughed behind him, making his way to Shiro’s old black minivan. The lights flashed, indicating that Shiro had unlocked it, so Keith didn’t waste any time sliding the door open and climbing into the back.

“Keith! Way back. We’re picking up some people on campus,” Shiro called. “Be prepared to be squished.”

“Ah, fuck, Shiro,” said Keith, shouting out the open car door. “Why do you have to be the carpool dad?”

“Because Nana bought me a used minivan and not a Mustang.”

Keith grumbled to himself about nothing in particular and folded himself into the very back of the van, tucked against the driver’s side window. He had grabbed his DS and flipped it open—he didn’t know who was going to be in the van with him, so he thought he should get a head start on his method of avoidance.  Shiro was laughing as he and Allura climbed into the front seat, but Allura was just grinning—there was something mirthful behind her eyes, an evil streak that Keith had seen a few times before when she played tricks on the waitresses.

He didn’t want to know.

The drive to campus was short—one turn onto University Drive and a few minutes down the road. Shiro pulled his minivan up near Garrison Hall. Keith could see that there was a cluster of people huddled near the entrance to the building, half in and half out—one member of the group was standing outside, flapping around in a large hoodie and gold pants and yelling, another was holding the door open, and the rest were inside where it was warmer.

“Lance!” Shiro shouted out the window, in his Carpool DadTM voice. Keith looked closer as the one in the gold pants whirled around and waved—it was indeed Lance. He groaned and leaned against the window, pressing his face up against the cold glass and closing his eyes. Shiro must’ve seen, because he started laughing again.

When Keith reopened his eyes and lifted his head, Lance was walking towards the vehicle, Pidge, Hunk, and Matt trailing behind him. Shiro had said they were picking up people on campus, and he had assumed it would be Matt and some of his and Shiro’s grad student friends. Keith hadn’t even considered that Lance and Co. would be going to this party, but it made sense—of course Matt would invite Pidge, and Shiro had mentioned inviting kids he met in the tutoring center.

The car was flooded with light when Lance opened the door on the other side of the car, tilting the seat forward so he could climb into the back. “Keith! Ready to lose at some Halloween games? Or, apparently, to lose at Halloween in general. What are you wearing, man?”

Lance was one to talk. He was flecked with gold, with flakes of gold in his hair and across the bridge of his nose like freckles. Bright, shimmery gold lipstick bordered Lance’s teeth as he grinned at Keith, and more of the same metallic color followed as he crawled over the back seat and into the very back.

“What are _you_ wearing?” asked Keith, his tone sharper than intended. Lance sat in the window seat on the opposite side; he didn’t even have to be told that he was too tall to sit in the middle, he just knew.

“I am in costume. For _Halloween_ ,” Lance emphasized. Pidge was climbing into the car and situating themselves between the two boys, a grimace on their face as they heard the snippet of their conversation.

“He’s C3PO,” said Pidge, who was wearing an Ash Ketchum hat over their choppy brown hair. “Which is fitting, because everyone thinks C3PO is annoying.”

Keith looked over again at Lance’s legs, seeing now that he was not wearing tight gold pants, but a gold undersuit beneath pieces of painted robot armor that were not quite metal but crafted to look like it. It was very well done.

“Pidge wouldn’t be my R2,” Lance pouted. “They were not the droid I was looking for. I am aimless and alone.”

“Hi, Keith. I didn’t know you’d be coming!” said Hunk brightly as he got in on Keith’s side of the car, using the other door instead of climbing over the seats. He looked around his seat and grinned. Hunk appeared to be dressed like Luke Skywalker, wearing a tunic and holding a lightsaber in one hand—at least Lance had part of his group costume.

“Hunk matches with you,” said Keith, leaning around Pidge to look at Lance. Pidge sighed heavily, accompanied by an eyeroll. “Isn’t that enough?”

“No. R2 and C3PO are a pair. It would’ve been perfect if it was all of us, but nooooo,” Lance huffed. He made a loud sound of protest when Matt pushed back the seat and rammed it into his legs.

“Shit, sorry,” said Matt, wearing all black and carrying a pumpkin head, dressed as the dancing man in the Halloween meme that Keith had seen all over the internet all month. He’d been bragging about the costume since he’d come up with the idea. Keith remembered his eureka moment because he’d been so excited he kicked over a dining chair.

“We got everyone? Do I need to take roll call?” Shiro asked over his shoulder. Keith groaned. Finally, they pulled away from the curb in front of Garrison and began the slightly longer drive towards Allura’s posh neighborhood.

During the drive, Lance’s hand snaked around Pidge to prod at Keith’s shoulder. “Keith,” he hissed, not subtly. “Keith.”

“What?”

“Did you play any Voltron?” he asked. Keith looked over and found Lance’s crooked, expectant grin staring back at him. In the low light, it looked softer than it had ever looked before. “I gotta know, my man, so I can prepare for next weekend.”

“Yes. Thirteen thousand,” said Keith. “Good fucking luck.”

Lance made an indignant sound and shoved gently at Keith’s head. “Go suck yourself, Mullet.”

“Suck myself? That sounds ridiculous!” Keith protested, glad that the car was dark enough to hide the flush of his face. Lance was mussing his hair, laughing like a little shit. “Stop touching me, you…you golden boy.”

Pidge looked over, their eyes narrowed. “Really? I was rooting for you. We were all rooting for you.”

Lance pulled his hand away and didn’t say anything, but Keith caught a glimpse of his smile among flecks of gold. He caught the light of the street lamps they drove under, literally shining from across the car. Keith felt that same infuriating thing that had woken up the day Lance set the high score.

He buried his face in his hands and groaned, letting the rest of the car think it was because his comeback was a disaster, when really it was everything else about the moment—it was Lance’s vulgar suggestion, his satisfied smile, his hand in Keith’s hair. It was the R2D2 t-shirt beneath Keith’s sweatshirt that he now knew he could never, ever take off.

Lance didn’t stay quiet for long, but he didn’t pester Keith either. His attention turned to the rest of the car until they pulled up in front of Allura’s home, which was grandiose and modern and ridiculously expensive. There was a reason The Universal hadn’t gone under, and it wasn’t loyal patronage—the diner was Allura’s baby, and she refused to let her father close it, so it lived on. Paychecks and supply money came out of Alfor’s wallet more than they came from actual profits, but he seemed happy to pay so that she didn’t lose something she loved so much.

The second she unlocked the door and sailed into the spacious entryway, Allura started ordering people around. There were boxes of decorations piled up in a living room to one side, and she directed Lance and Hunk towards them. Pidge and Matt were sent to work with the sound system. Shiro was told to put his costume on, and she ushered Keith into the kitchen to help her set up the refreshments—an entire buffet table worth of snacks and drinks, tucked away into one of the refrigerators until the party was meant to start.

“Allura,” called Shiro, emerging from the bathroom with his in ripped clothes, sickly greenish paint only half-applied to his face. “I’m not sure how to do this.”

Allura glided over to him. “You did it yourself last year, didn’t you?”

“No, uh, I’m pretty sure you did it,” he said. “I’m not sure what constitutes as properly gruesome.”  

Allura clucked and shook her head. She looked out over the snack table—everything that could be put out this early was out, and the things that needed to stay in the fridge would be taken out when other guests started arriving.

“Keith, go help with the decorations,” said Allura. “I’m going to deal with your helpless brother.”

Keith laughed as he left the wide-open kitchen and dining area, walking across the foyer again to find Hunk and Lance standing on stepstools and hanging cobwebs from the ceiling in the large sitting room.

“Reinforcements!” Lance said, hopping down from his stepstool and migrating over to the boxes of Halloween décor. He and Hunk had already rummaged through them thoroughly, and things were spilling over onto the floor. Lance picked up two rolls of streamers—black and white with a blood-splatter design—and looked to Keith. “Catch.”

Keith caught the rolls as Lance tossed them at him, the crepe-paper crinkling against his fingers.

“What do you want me to do with these?” asked Keith.

“Hang them from the staircase railing,” Lance suggested. “And if you have extras, maybe do some decorating in the kitchen? I don’t know, there’s tons of stuff here, we don’t even need all of it for this floor, and Allura decided not to do the upstairs this year, she said.”

Keith shrugged and went to work. Before long, the Holt siblings had gotten the sound system to work, and spooky music and sound effects drifted through the house. Keith finished decorating the staircase in the foyer and went back to look through the decoration boxes. He found some fake body parts to pile up in the corner of the dining room, and a few eyes and ears to place among the platters on the food table.

As he adjusted the tablecloth—which also had a blood-splatter pattern, like the streamers—Lance walked into the room and surveyed his work. He walked over and snatched an olive from a plate near Keith’s hand. Keith instinctively drew away from him. Now that he was inside, Lance wasn’t wearing the hoodie anymore, and Keith looked him up and down to view the complete costume. It was well put together, he thought, though Lance had not chosen to wear a mask or gold body paint.

“Did you make that?” Keith asked, pointing to Lance’s metallic armor. Lance was digging through the chip bowl and chewing at the same time when he looked over.

He swallowed. “Yeah, out of craft foam. You like?”

“It’s cool.” Keith shrugged. Lance reached across Keith to take something from the meat and cheese plate. “Too bad there’s no mask.”

Lance looked at him again, and in the light Keith could see his eyes sparkle in the light just like his face makeup did. “I mean, yeah. I just don’t like masks. I always feel like I can’t breathe.”

“Oh, I meant because now I have to look at your face.”

Lance wheeled back, standing a foot away from Keith with his hands on his hips. “You bitch.”

Keith laughed. The doorbell rang and Allura was yelling as she moved through the rooms of her house, threatening them all with unemployment if everything wasn’t already ready.

“I don’t work for you!” shouted Lance, distracted from Keith by the arrival of the party guest. He was walking out, and Keith was breathing easy again. “Only one of us works for you, Allura.”

Allura shushed him and tossed open the door, and thus the party began.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought it was about time we heard from Keith...I wasn't sure if I was going to write him being super gay for Lance quite this early in the story but my hand slipped. Whoops.  
> Next chapter will be the actual events of the party, including a certain two people locked in a bathroom together. Look forward to it. It'll be great.


	4. Chapter 4

About an hour into the party, Keith slipped away to hide in the upstairs bathroom. The guests were supposed to stay downstairs—Allura had even hung up crime scene tape on the staircase, crossed in the space between the wall and the railing a few steps from the top. The bathroom had been the first door he opened, and it felt the least like an invasion of privacy (as opposed to hiding away in one of the bedrooms), so Keith had hunkered down in the bathtub and turned on his DS. From here, he could faintly hear the music without all of the discomfort of brushing up against people he didn’t know and being talked to by random people who recognized him as Shiro’s brother.

And here, he wasn’t noticing Lance. He wasn’t seeing Lance dancing, all lanky arms and swinging hips and that big, bright grin. He wasn’t scanning rooms for a glint of gold; his ears weren’t picking through the din to pinpoint the exact sound of Lance’s laugh. In the bathtub on the second floor, Keith wasn’t noticing that the hoodie Lance was drowning in earlier had been Hunk’s and that the two seemed very comfortable sharing one small armchair in the living room.

Keith dropped his stylus with a start when the doorknob jiggled and turned. _Fuck_ , he’d forgotten to lock the door.

“Um, someone’s in here!” he called, desperately scrabbling for the stylus, which rolled away from his fingers and further towards the tub drain.

The door opened anyway, and Keith saw a shock of brown hair and shimmering gold in his peripheral vision. “Ha. Found you!”

His fingers grasped the stylus and Keith sat back up, gazing steadily at the gold leaf flecks on Lance’s right cheek.

“I wasn’t hiding,” he said.

“Shh, it’s okay, Keith,” said Lance. He locked the door to keep out any more uninvited guests, and then leaned back against the sink counter and crossed his arms over his breastplate. “We can’t all be social creatures like little old me. What are you up to?”

Keith held up his DS by way of answer.

“Ah, cool. What are you playing?” asked Lance. The bathroom was large enough that there was at least a yard’s distance between them, but Lance closed that space quickly. Before Keith could protest—and he really didn’t want to—Lance’s long legs carried him to the edge of the bathtub, where he kicked off his shoes, the only part of his outfit that was not gold. Once they were off and placed next to Keith’s on the floor, Lance stepped into the tub and lowered himself to sit beside Keith. Close, close, close.

“This and that,” answered Keith. He showed Lance the screen, which depicted a red lion in battle with a purplish monster, the screen frozen because he had paused it. “Look familiar?”

“What the cheese? Voltron is a DS game?” Lance leaned even closer, and Keith gripped his game system tighter. “This is amazing, Keith!”

Keith didn’t see how it was amazing— _Lion Force Voltron_ had been sort of popular when he was a kid, and he still had the game, which was one of the few things he’d carried with him every time he moved to a new foster home. It had come out in the shadow of a _Pokémon_ game, so Keith knew that not very many kids had gotten into it. But Shiro gave it to him, before he’d left to go live with Nana, because he knew Keith liked playing it. It meant the world to Keith, and he held onto the game for dear life as a reminder of the happiest part of his childhood, when Shiro was his brother. When he was adjusting to new homes and schools and struggling to find a place in the world, Voltron represented some kind of belonging to him. On top of that, it was just another thing for him to obsess over like the nerd he was—when Keith had walked into the diner on his first day of work and seen an original Voltron game cabinet, he died and went to heaven. 

It had become an unquestioned part of Keith’s universe, so he didn’t quite understand Lance’s mystified expression. He did, however, understand the curl of long fingers around his shoulder, squeezing excitedly.

“Oh. Yeah. This has been a thing for a while,” Keith said. “There’s a new one coming out for Xbox and PlayStation soon, I think black Friday.”

“My dude. My man. Keith,” Lance punctuated his sentences with soft squeezes into Keith’s shoulder, and Keith wasn’t sure how his body was not melting into liquid and flowing down the drain and into the pipes where he would live forever. “We have to play that.”

“Um. Sure,” Keith smiled softly, and he turned back to his DS. Instead of continuing his own game, Keith selected quit and went back to the main menu screen. “Lance?”

“Yeah?”

“You wanna try the DS version? This one is called _Lion Force Voltron_ instead, and to be honest it’s a lot cooler,” said Keith. “The original is awesome and a gem of its time, but this is what I grew up with.”

Lance looked incredibly interested, and when he realized Keith had asked him if he wanted to play, he started to nod vigorously. “Yes. Yes, I’d love to outrank you in your own favorite game.”

Keith laughed. He doubted Lance really thought he could beat Keith; the competition between them seemed more like an act now, a showy performance between two people who weren’t quite friends yet.

“How did you know it was my favorite?” asked Keith, still clutching the DS. “Did I say that?”

Lance looked pensive for a moment, thoughtful and soft. His hand withdrew from Keith’s shoulder, and he missed the warmth of it.

“It’s the way you look when you talk about it,” said Lance, finally.

Keith’s heart skipped a beat. He turned back to the screen, where there were five game slots and only two were taken—Shiro’s game, and Keith’s. Shiro hadn’t played in forever, but he was always, always welcome to.

Keith started another game. He labeled it _Lance_ and handed the other boy his DS, watching with a smile on his face as Lance hunched over the gaming system, reading the tutorials carefully. He asked the occasional question and made interested comments as he played through the storyline.

Eventually, they switched off again, with Keith playing and Lance watching. There were more questions, and Keith found himself putting down the game system to answer them in depth—he went into all of the Voltron lore he knew, talking about fan theories and trivia, entirely fueled by Lance’s interest.

“Is that what this pin is?” asked Lance, reaching for the DS carrying case that Keith had discarded on the floor earlier, when he’d set up camp in the bathtub. Lance’s fingertip found the little button depicting the fully assembled figure of Voltron. His nails were painted blue, with chipping polish—he must’ve forgotten to paint them to match the rest of his costume.

“Yeah,” Keith’s heart clenched, realizing that Lance was looking at all of his buttons now. Keith’s DS case was not something he carried often, so he had decorated it very freely. Among his Star Trek, Voltron, and Pokémon buttons, there was a single button depicting two mars symbols linked together on a rainbow background. It had been an impulse buy that he didn’t particularly care that much about, but it had felt good to take it out of his pocket and pin it to his DS bag as soon as he’d gotten on the bus to Altea to move in with Shiro.

Shiro, who had known since the night Keith had gazed up at the underside of the top bunk and told him. Shiro, who had climbed down and held Keith’s hand and said, “It’s okay.” Shiro, who had punched a kid in the face the very next day for just implying that there was something gross or wrong about being gay.

It wasn’t that he thought Lance would care. It was just that it was stressful anyway. The blue painted fingernail clicked against the pride pin, and Keith looked away.

Lance was close enough that all he had to do was shift his leg slightly to bump it against Keith’s.

“Hey,” he said. Keith looked up, and Lance handed him the case. “Thank you for letting me play.”

“Um, you’re welcome.”

“About your button…I get it,” said Lance. He clicked the same one again with his nail, leaning in closer to do it. Keith realized that Lance had read him to the T. “I have some pride things I wear sometimes. It feels good to have it but weird to have people see it. Like, I don’t feel ashamed or anything, but it’s also kind of vulnerable too. At least I know not everyone can identify the bi flag colors on sight.”

“Oh,” said Keith. “Are you and Hunk…?”

Lance snorted. “No. Friends. Best friends. We’re like brothers, except that I have two of my own and that’s _more than enough_.” 

“Oh.”

“You say  _'oh'_ a lot,” said Lance. His smile was not the grin that Keith had seen, that blinding, gleeful thing that made Keith feel like lightning was striking his heart, stopping and restarting it, scorching his chest cavity. Instead, this was just the curve of Lance’s lips—all of its glow was in his eyes.

It was so much worse than the lightning.

Lance was attractive—Keith was fine with admitting that. He had noticed it before he’d really even officially met Lance, having seen him on campus a few times earlier in the semester. But this was a stickier feeling, this was something that he knew but still didn’t want to name.  It was sickly sweet and it spread all over, especially when Lance looked like that, when their legs were pressed together in the limited space of the bathtub, when the memory of the moment that had just passed was still ringing in Keith’s ears.

Someone pounded on the door, but Keith was only dimly aware of it.

“Keith!” Allura’s voice carried through the door, and Keith turned only because his brain was wired to respond to his own name. “Keith, I know you’re in there!”

“Maybe if we’re extra quiet, she’ll go away,” said Lance, leaning in conspiratorially. Outside, Allura knocked insistently again, and then wiggled the doorknob.

“Keith, you creepy little recluse, open this door,” she demanded. “You didn’t come to my party just to sulk in my bathroom.”

“The only thing that’s creepy about Keith is his mullet,” Lance shouted. He was untangling his own limbs and pushing himself up and out of the bathtub, shuffling over to the door in stocking feet. Keith looked on as Lance leaned against the doorframe, cracking the door open and grinning through the gap. “Hello, princess.”

“Lance?”

“Yeeesss?”

“Is Keith in there with you?” Allura asked. Lance lifted his shoulders in a lazy, noncommittal shrug, and Keith heard her grunt in frustration. A second later, she had pushed past Lance and into the bathroom. Keith stared up at her, wide-eyed and flushed; on some level, he was fearing for his life. “What’s going on here?”

“I think the proper question to ask is whether you’re interrupting something,” said Lance, draping and arm around Allura’s shoulders. Keith felt himself get even pinker. “What do _you_ think is going on here?”

“That’s a dirty lie,” said Allura, unfazed. “You’ve obviously been playing with that little gadget there,” she pointed to Keith’s Nintendo DS, which was still open in one hand, his game paused. “I won’t stand for this, you know. I won’t have you two sneaking into the bathroom to play video games during my party.”

“Allura…” Keith trailed off, feeling guilt trickling into his stomach. “I’m sorry, your party is great, I just….”

She held up a hand. “I know. You misunderstand—I’m not _insulted_. I just don’t think you’re having the best time you could have squished in a bathtub with this idiot.”

“What?” Lance squawked. Allura ignored him.

“Come on,” she said, reaching out a hand to help Keith get to his feet. “Grab your things, I have an idea.”

 ****

Allura led them to the end of the hall and opened the door, revealing a room with a few steps up to it. A large television and entertainment center dominated one wall, and against another were shelves lined with colorful plastic cases. There was a plushy couch in the middle of the room, flanked by gaming chairs on one side and a pile of beanbags on the other.

Lance bounded into the room, dropping his shoes near the door and making a beeline for the shelves. Every movie and game he could imagine was in sight, and he found delight in the way they felt when he ran his fingers across them. He looked over his shoulder at Keith, who hovered in the doorway with his arms full of his things, which he’d gathered up from their place on the bathroom floor as they’d been herded out.

“This is fucking _lit_ ,” Lance said, buzzing with excitement. Keith smiled at him, but it was reserved compared to the way he’d lit up when they were playing games in the bathtub. Lance felt a twinge of disappointment. He ignored it in favor of the giddiness he felt when he looked at the wall of games.

Allura laughed, her hands on her hips. “I thought you’d like it. This is the bonus room—I hate to say it doesn’t get much use these days. But you two are welcome to sit in here and play whatever you want. It’s better than the bathroom, for sure, with proper seats and everything.”

“I’m going to kick Keith’s ass,” Lance said, bouncing on his toes. “It’s going to be great. We could even get some other party people up here for a tourneyt! Man, princess, this is _awesome_.”

“No tournament,” said Keith, unloading his things on the couch. Lance leaned on the back of it, face inches from Keith’s. The other boy backed away, increasing the space between them, and gazed sullenly back. “No tournament, or I’m going back to the bathroom.”

Lance tilted his head, regarding Keith’s words. His posture and expression were devil-may-care, edgy emo god; his eyes were drawn with something like anxiety. It was a feeling that Lance recognized, but not something that he’d ever seen in Keith before.

“Are you shy?” Lance asked. He didn’t mean to be abrasive, but when the words tumbled from his lips sounding the way they did, Lance wished he could shove them back in. Keith turned his head and looked at a spot on the carpet. “I mean. There’s nothing wrong with that. It can be just us if you want. Or we could ask Hunk and Pidge, if you rather it be familiar people. I really don’t mind either way, I just want to play. And beat you. Hopefully.”

Keith’s fists clenched and unclenched once before he shoved his hands in his pockets and lifted his eyes. A slow smirk touched his lips.

“I was thinking more along the lines of ‘no tourney because you’ll never beat me in the first place’,” he said, eyes flashing at Lance.

Lance stood up straight, reaching his full height and towering just a few inches over Keith.

“Bring it, Mullet.”

Allura floated off to continue hosting the party, and the boys pulled the gaming chairs into the space between the couch and the TV. They were the same design, low to the ground and tilted for what was apparently perfect gaming posture—Lance didn’t take that suggestion, and was one of those people who leaned with his controller even though it didn’t do anything. They were colored differently: one was white and red, the other white and blue.

Lance claimed the blue. Keith didn’t argue, just sat in his chair and watched Lance crouch before the shelves to pick a game for the PlayStation. There were a few different fighting games to choose from, as well as a racing game, so Lance grabbed a couple and carried them over to where Keith was sitting.

“This is great, I’ve played it at a buddy’s house. The story mode is stupid but you can do one-on-one battles,” Lance handed Keith the first case before continuing. “This one is similar but it doesn’t have weapons, just hand-to-hand combat. And this last one is like, some kind of car race.”

“I like this game, I have it at home,” Keith said, holding up the first one that Lance had suggested. With that, Lance took it and crawled over to put the disk into the console. He crawled back as they waited for it to load.

For a while they played undisturbed, just the two of them. Lance was loud, shrieking when Keith’s characters hacked at him with various weapons and whooping triumphantly with every successful shot against Keith. Keith indulged him, allowing himself to get competitive, bantering back and forth during and between battles.

Occasionally, when Lance was trying to choose a character to best Keith with, or when he was talking about the cool move he’d just pulled off, he noticed that Keith was watching him with a funny little smile on his face. He usually stopped when he realized that Lance saw him, switching back to a more normal Keith expression—determined or smug or just plain frowny.

Keith was his nemesis in name only; it seemed to Lance like they were slowly becoming friends. When he saw Keith on campus, they waved or nodded across the room. At the diner, Keith emerged from the back and talked to Lance more and more. He was learning the little puzzle pieces of Keith, a new one for every moment, and he wanted to learn more. He wanted to learn all of it, wanted to fit him in with the larger puzzle of his friend group.  

He seemed like he would fit really well, if Lance tried.

“Hey,” said Lance, after Keith won a battle. Keith looked triumphant, but quietly so, not like the boisterous way Lance celebrated his victories. “Do you want to go back to the party? I kind of miss my squad. You can stick with us, if you want.”

Keith looked like he was considering.

“I can text them to come up, too, if that’s better,” Lance added. He pulled up the leg of his gold stretch suit to reveal a small cell phone holster hidden behind the bulk of his leg armor. Withdrawing the phone, he opened up his contacts.

“No, I’ll go with you,” said Keith finally. His eyes were wide, and he looked away from Lance almost as soon as he’d said it, watching his fingers as they fiddled with the controller in his hand.

“I’ll stick to you like glue,” said Lance. He held out his phone, showing that he had created a contact page for Keith, with a collection of emojis beside his name. “Here. I don’t have your number yet.”

Keith stared at the phone screen. “Is that a robot emoji?”

“Yeah,” said Lance. There was a lion, a robot, and a little video game controller tacked onto the end of Keith’s contact name. Lance had almost added a grumpy face, but he wasn’t sure how that would go over with Keith. “I do that with all of my contacts. I pick emojis that remind me of that person. These ones remind me of you, you know, because of Voltron.”

Keith took the phone carefully from Lance’s hand and typed in his phone number. He looked a little like he was in shock. When the device was handed back, Lance bumped his shoulder against Keith’s in a gesture of support and camaraderie, and Keith smiled. This Keith was soft around the edges, and Lance liked the way it looked on him.

“I’m sending you a text so you have my number,” said Lance. He tapped away on his keyboard, generating a quick message to send to Keith’s phone. When he was finished, he dropped his phone onto his chair and started putting away the games and controllers.

By the time the room was put back the way they found it, Keith had put his shoes and hoodie back on and slung his DS carrier over his shoulder. Lance took a quick second to slip back into his sneakers before grabbing his phone off the gaming chair.

**1 new message from Keith.**

**Lance:** I like your R2D2 shirt. We’re like space robot partners.

**Keith:** Except that R2 is better


	5. Chapter 5

That Thursday, Lance finished his homework early. He leaned back in his desk chair and tilted his head back, looking upside down at Hunk. His roommate was rummaging around in his desk drawers, looking for something.

“I’m not feeling cafeteria food today,” said Lance. “You up for Universal?”

“I’m going to that thing tonight,” said Hunk, looking up from his search. “For the engineering fraternity. Remember?”

“Oh, yeah,” Lance made a pouty face. “And Pidge has robotics club.”

“Yeah,” Hunk shrugged. “We’ll still go on Saturday, though. That’s when Keith works, anyway.”  
“Why do you think I care whether Keith is there?”

 “I’ve seen your texts back and forth, talking about nerd stuff. That is a budding friendship if I’ve ever seen one.” Hunk smiled knowingly at Lance. What he thought he knew, Lance wasn’t sure.

“Fine. We’re friends…ish.”

“That’s not a thing,” said Hunk, closing his drawer and turning around in his chair to face Lance. “Does Keith work today?”

“Well, yes,” said Lance. “It’s why he’s not texting me right now. Not that it stops me from texting him.”

Hunk reached over and took the phone that Lance held out to him. “Dude, this is taking your pro-double-texting policy to an extreme. Is this…is this a rant about Frida Kahlo?”

“She’s an icon, Hunk.”

Hunk eyed the stack of art history books on the floor beside Lance’s bed. He had registered for an intro class next semester and had gotten so hyped about it that he’d checked out several books on the subject. Lance had also combed through the inventory of the used bookstore at the edge of the campus, finding an older edition of one of the textbooks for the class and the Frida Kahlo biography that he had been carrying around since starting it on Monday afternoon.

“Let no one ever accuse you of being anything but a huge nerd,” said Hunk. He handed Lance’s phone back.

Lance got up from his chair and picked up his messenger bag, trading textbooks for the Frida biography and his five-subject notebook for his own handheld gaming system. On his way out of the room, he plucked his weathered green jacket from the hook by the door.

“Do you have your keys?” Hunk asked as Lance pulled open the door and stepped out into the hall. Between the smell, the boisterous voices from down the hall, and the paper cutouts of penises that someone had tacked to the communal bulletin board, one could definitely tell this was a boy’s floor.

“Are you mothering me?” asked Lance, pausing in the doorway.

Hunk smiled. “No. Just don’t want a repeat of the other day when you didn’t take anything with you to the shower and you had to wait in the hall for me to get home to let you in because the RA was out.”

“Ha. Good times,” said Lance.

“Good times? You were naked and wet and really angry, so I wouldn’t say it was _good times_ ,” said Hunk, shaking his head. Lance laughed and reached into the pocket of his sweatpants, removing his keys and jingling them in Hunk’s direction. “Good. Now go so I can get the image of your skinny ass in nothing but a towel out of my head.”

“Oh, you remember it that clearly? Didn’t know you were looking,” said Lance devilishly as he closed the door behind him. He could hear his roommate’s laughter on the other side, and he smiled to himself as he headed down the hall.

Lance decided not to remove his bike from Garrison’s underground storage, instead opting to walk the short route to the diner. It was partly because his helmet was inexplicably missing and Hunk warned him sharply against riding without it, but Lance also just felt like walking.

As he made his way off campus, he waved at a few classmates he passed and another student that was on the campus cleaning staff with him. He hummed to himself as he made his way along University Drive, thinking about his work schedule and the quiz he had just taken in class that day, and about Keith.

He had seen Keith once since Allura’s party, studying after-hours in a corner of the science building on a night Lance was cleaning. He’d said hello and instead of kicking Keith out—the building was technically closed after ten—let him stay and finished his work on the floor. By the time Lance had circled back around, Keith had left; Lance was still kind of disappointed that he hadn’t stayed to talk.

When Lance finally approached the diner, he peered through the windows to see if Keith was at the front of the restaurant. The busboy was indeed there, walking around with his bin on his hip. When he went to clear a table by the window, Lance stood just outside and tapped on the glass until Keith looked up. Lance grinned and waved energetically, watching as Keith’s face evolved from his default grimace to surprise, to a smile that stayed mostly in his eyes.

Lance gestured towards the door and then headed to it, entering the diner and meeting Keith at the table he’d been busing.

“Hey, loser,” said Lance as he walked over.

“What are you doing here?” Keith asked. Before Lance could reply, he added, “I mean, not that you can’t come here whenever you want for whatever reason. I just mean you’re usually here on Saturdays with the gang.”

“I wanted a burger,” Lance said, clapping Keith on the back as he moved to his other side, nodding towards the Voltron game in the corner. “And to knock your name off my spot on the scoreboard.”

“Your spot? Who had it first?”

“Your reign has to come to an end eventually,” said Lance. “Plus, I liked the view from the top. I want it back.”

Lance hadn’t yet removed his hand from between Keith’s shoulder blades, so he felt the shift of muscles when the other boy finished clearing the table and stood up straight again. He drew away and shoved his hands in his pockets, smiling sheepishly as Keith looked at him with knitted brows.

Lance could feel the heat in his cheeks. “Uh, when do you get off today?” he asked.

Keith looked at the UFO clock on the wall above them. It was almost five o’clock.

“In like an hour,” said Keith. He withdrew a spray bottle from his bin, spritzing the surface of the table with cleaner and wiping it down with the rag he had draped over his shoulder. “Well, uh, sit somewhere. You came to eat, didn’t you?”

Lance made a thinking face. Keith looked at him, one eyebrow raised.

“Nah,” Lance finally said. “I’m gonna wait until you’re off.”

“Why?”

“I’m great company,” Lance shrugged. “Why should I eat alone? I might regret it later when looking at your mullet makes me lose my appetite, but yeah. You should eat with me.”

Keith stopped cleaning and stared intently at the table. Lance wasn’t sure why he was staring or what he was staring at—perhaps the salt and pepper shakers were low and he needed to refill them. Maybe it was time to stuff the napkin dispensers again. Possibly, he was avoiding looking at Lance because the whole thing was too damn awkward, because he was going to say no.

Lance wasn’t sure why he cared so much, why the thought made his stomach squirm. 

“Only if you want to,” he added, clearing his throat. Lance’s face felt warm, and he noticed a matching blush growing across Keith’s cheeks and the bridge of his nose. “I just thought, uh…maybe you wouldn’t mind, since we’re kind of becoming friends….”

“Yeah, why not?” said Keith. “I could use something to eat.”

Lance grinned. “Awesome.”

Keith was still avoiding his eyes, but there was a small smile on his face and a blush to his cheeks. The way he looked surprised Lance—he’d noticed before that Keith was good-looking, mullet notwithstanding, but there was also something _cute_ about him too.  Like when he talked about Voltron while they were squished together in Allura’s bathtub, or when he smiled that little smile when he thought Lance wasn’t looking, or now, turning red in the face over a simple dinner invitation.

“See you then,” said Lance, turning away and heading towards where the Voltron game in the corner. When he got there, he could see his reflection in the dark loading screen. Lance realized his eyes were wide with something like surprise, but not quite, and there was a smile not unlike Keith’s gracing his lips.

Then the game started, and Lance didn’t have time to think about Keith, or about the effect Keith was having on him—he was too busy defending the universe.

 ****

The kitchen was a cacophony of pots and pans clanging against one another, Coran shouting orders across the room as the waitresses brought them in. Keith barely heard what was being said over the sound of his own internal screaming.

“Hello, Keith,” said Coran. “Oh my, are you overworking yourself? You seem flushed, my boy.”

“I’m fine,” Keith choked out. He forced himself to move from the entryway, where he’d frozen in place as soon as he was out of Lance’s sight. Keith carted his bin full of dirty dishes over to the washing station to sort through its contents, dumping napkins and uneaten food in the trash and loading dishes into the sink to be rinsed before they went through the dishwasher. It was mindless work, leaving room for Keith to obsess over the events of the last few minutes.

He thought too much about the tiny thrill that had swelled in him when he’d looked up to see Lance standing outside the window, about the hand that had landed on his back and lingered, about Lance’s offer to stay until he was off and eat with him. _What did that mean?_

Lance had said they were friends. Was that a good sign? Did it mean he was _only_ interested in being friends? Or did the very act of asking Keith to join him for dinner, without his other friends here, mean something else entirely?

To Lance, it was probably nothing. Keith tried to dash away his rising hopes—Lance was a nice guy, and the invitation was likely more about being friendly than what Keith wanted to read it as.

Once he’d finished this round of dishes, Keith weaved his way through the kitchen and towards the open office door. Allura sat inside, bent over the desk and chewing on the end of a pen. With a glance at the pile of papers she was pouring over, he realized it was not paperwork at all but a crossword puzzle she was doing in pink glitter pen.

“Hello, Keith,” she said around the pen. She removed it and put the cap on. “You look flustered. Anything I can help you with?”

“Um. It’s nothing to do with work,” Keith said. “I just wanted to—”

Allura cut him off and gestured to the folding chair in the corner of the cramped office. “Sit. Tell me your woes. I’ll try to help anyway I can.”

“No, no, it’s fine.”

“Keith, I insist,” she said as she tapped the seat of the chair invitingly. The charm bracelet she wore clanged against the metal, and the charms tinkled against each other. “I’m your boss, but I was your friend first.”

Keith sighed and gave in, flopping down hard on the chair. She turned herself in his direction and crossed her legs, waiting patiently for him to spill whatever this was. He eyed the open door, so Allura nudged it closed with her foot.

“So, I’m not sure if you realized already, but I’m gay,” Keith began. She nodded. He figured. Keith could think of various instances where Allura could’ve picked up on it. Come to think of it, he was pretty unsubtle about it now that he wasn’t actively hiding his orientation from his foster parents and high school classmates.

“No one’s giving you trouble for it, are they? If it’s someone who works here, give the word and they’re gone,” said Allura, calmly but still with a terrifying edge to her voice. The only reason Keith wasn’t uneasy at the sound of it was because he knew she was being protective of him.

“No, just thought I would put that out in the open, since it’s about a guy,” Keith heaved another sigh, rubbing his face. The blush felt like it was fading, but his mind was still racing, running in circles around Lance, Lance, Lance. _Fuck_. “So, I met somebody, right?”

“Okay,”

“He’s just. He’s so _everything,_ ” Keith shook his head, unsure how to describe Lance without giving it away. How Lance was a shit but still so charming, how he was tall and handsome and so incredibly dorky, how he made Keith laugh and encouraged him to talk and _actually listened_. How Lance blew up his phone almost every day talking about something new with rambling enthusiasm, and Keith felt this funny little pressure in his stomach whenever he got the notifications. “I _hate_ him.”

 “But you don’t,” said Allura knowingly. “And I suppose that’s the issue.”

“Yeah.”

“That definitely sounds like a crush,” said Allura, picking up her pen again and wiggling it between her fingers. “A massive one. Anyway, what’s brought this particular crisis on? Is this crush being particularly… _crushable_?”

“Asked me to dinner. But he’s a friendly guy, so.” Keith shook his head. “It means nothing and I know that, but it’s still driving me nuts.”

Allura tapped her pen against her chin. “Ah. That’s difficult.”

Keith leaned back in the chair, his head hitting the wall behind him with a soft thump. There it was, out in the open, the very thing he’d been hesitant to admit to himself but had to, now that Lance was here again. He couldn’t ignore it, just like he hadn’t been able to ignore it a few nights ago when he’d seen Lance in the science building and when they were shoulder to shoulder in Allura’s bathtub. It was definitely a crush and he definitely wished this dinner was a date and not just a casual _“You should eat with me because I don’t want to eat alone.”_

“Keith, here’s something to consider,” said Allura. “He’s asking you to dinner as a friend, yes? This means he enjoys your company, wants to get to know you, wants to _be your friend_.”

“I guess so.”

“Good friends are an enormous blessing, Keith,” she went on. “The fact that he wants to be your friend doesn’t mean _nothing_ —it means a great deal. If you want to hold onto hope…well, good friendships can evolve. My parents were friends before they started dating. My girlfriend and I were best friends who happened to fall in love. Think about it.”

“You’re right. It’s a good thing,” he sighed, trying to release the tension that had built up in him. He was frustrated with himself for feeling like this, frustrated that he’d made a fuss over nothing, frustrated that he let it spill out into Allura’s lap like this was an episode of Dr. Phil. “I’ll just let myself have a good time and stop…stressing.”

Allura laughed. “You do stress too much. Spending time with him should be something that makes you happy, even if it’s not exactly what you wish it was.”

“Thanks, Allura,” Keith stood up from his seat. He moved to leave the office, but Allura cleared her throat softly to get his attention again. “Yeah?”

“You seemed like you were coming to tell me something else,” she said. “But we digressed.”

“Oh. Yeah, I was going to tell you that Lance was here. Figured you might want to say hi,” Keith said. After it came out of his mouth, he regretted it—he saw her head tilt curiously, saw her face light up as she realized what he’d unintentionally admitted—something she’d probably already known. Apparently, he was more of an open book than he thought, these days. Keith felt his face grow warm again, and he muttered something about needing to get back to work before he fled, through the kitchen and out into the diner.

For the rest of his shift, Keith skirted around Allura and Lance. Allura schooled her expression well, but Keith could see the way she looked between him and Lance and smiled like she was in on some grand secret. She left him alone, though.

It was Lance that presented a problem, because he kept popping up at Keith’s side between games or calling him over to show how close he was getting to the high score. Keith had played since the night of the party, reaching 14,500 and almost beating the level, so Lance had a lot of catching up to do. Keith would be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy watching Lance’s continued efforts; his determination was refreshing and the face he made when he focused was kind of cute.

He also came to talk about other things, too. He asked about Keith’s studies, and Keith told him about his aviation science major, and that he was a transfer student who’d gone to online college the previous year. In turn, Keith learned that Lance was still undecided and was running out of time to declare—he was considering biochem, pre-med, and engineering with money in mind, but he didn’t sound like his heart was in it at all.

Keith pointed this out. 

“Hey, what are you talking about? I love science,” he said, poking the side of Keith’s head. It was a front, a rushed cover-up of his doubts, so Keith didn’t push him away like he itched to. Instead, he shrugged.

“You can love science but not want to devote your entire life to it,” said Keith. “Maybe you’ll find something else you want to do. I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I left high school, and then it took me a year to actually convince myself to do it. Shiro was undecided when he was a freshman, but he didn’t rush to find what he wanted and now he’s happier than ever with his choice.”

“Wait, really?”

“Yeah. I mean, I saw it coming,” said Keith. “He needed a lot of physical therapy after…well, after what the accident put his body through. It makes sense that he would want to help people in similar situations. But who listens to their baby brother when they’re trying to choose a major?”

“Wow,” Lance said thoughtfully. After a moment of quiet contemplation, he wandered away from Keith and back towards the game. Keith went to do another bin full of dishes, and when he came back Lance was back to his loud excitable self, as if nothing had happened.

It was almost time for Keith to punch out when Lance called for him again.

“Keith, Keith,” he shouted, without tearing his eyes from the monitor. “Get your ass over here and look at this.”

Keith complied, trying to ignore the way Allura’s gaze followed him as he went to Lance’s side. He directed his attention to the screen as Lance played.

Lance spared a second to look over at Keith, and if Lance’s grin wasn’t proof there was a God, Keith didn’t know what was. It was, quite possibly, the gayest thing he’d ever thought to himself. He wasn’t sure—it was hard to keep track, especially now that he was hanging around Lance more often.

“Look,” Lance was pointing to his score counter in the corner of the screen, lifting his hand from the controls. It was climbing, growing closer and closer to Keith’s score. Keith didn’t look for long, instead turning back to Lance’s face. He missed the moment when the blue lion was shot down, seeing instead the way Lance’s lips parted when he let out a sharp, frustrated exhale. He missed the leaderboard that showed Lance’s final score, incredibly close to his own but not there yet, because he was watching Lance fish through his pockets for more quarters.

“It’s six,” Keith said. “I have to punch out.”

“Oh,” said Lance. He looked up and smiled softly. “You do that, I’ll grab a table. Unless you’d rather…eat somewhere else? I know how a place can get tiring if you’ve been there too long.”

“No. This…this will be good. This will be fine.”

Keith felt Lance’s eyes on his back as he ventured into the kitchen, taking the small hallway that branched off of it, housing the timeclock and the breakroom. Keith unlocked his employee locker and shoved his apron inside, withdrawing his hoodie and phone.

Lance had been texting him before he’d gotten to work, and apparently hadn’t stopped. He read through Lance’s complaints about his homework and his praise of the artist Frida Kahlo and paused when he reached the photo Lance had sent.

**Lance:** Haha caught you smiling

Keith didn’t remember him taking the photo, but it was there all the same, almost unrecognizable to him. It was him, for sure, but grinning ear-to-ear and pointing at the Voltron monitor—it was one of the times Lance had called him over, and he’d been talking about the Galra fighters and ways to take them down using both lions, since they were growing in strength.

The game hadn’t even been paused. How had Lance found the time to snap that picture?

Why had he taken it at all?

**Keith:** I’m smiling because you still can’t beat me

He shoved his phone in the pocket of his jeans and hid in the break room for as long as it took for his blush to fade and his thoughts to stop racing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Keith is a fucking goner and he's not subtle, Lance is into Keith more than he really realizes, and Allura knows everything.


	6. Chapter 6

Lance talked a lot. Keith had known this, but he was still stunned by how much his dinner companion had to say. He’d talked about Voltron with Keith for the whole stretch of time before Allura brought their food out, discussing what he’d learned by playing and what he’d read on the internet. The new game was quickly approaching, so a lot of it was hype about that and theories about what would be in it—Lance’s favorite was the possibility that the character you played as could be different species of aliens.

“Even Galra, man,” said Lance. “I think it’s a good idea, you know—the Galra war isn’t the fault of the race, but the fault of a few extremists. Having a Galra on Voltron’s side could be really great.”

Then he’d been interrupted by the burger that was set in front of him. Not that food stopped Lance from talking, but that was okay. Keith was refreshed by the conversation. Usually he ate dinner alone, and if someone else was in the kitchen at the same time it was a silent coexistence. Hearing Lance talk about the time his brother Luis had knocked Lance’s tooth out, or debating with him about whether glitter or glow-in-the-dark paint was better, Keith felt engaged in life in a way he wasn’t used to.

“Chronic pain. An unstable marriage. Miscarriages,” Lance was talking about Frida Kahlo again, with some kind of reverence as he dug around through the whipped cream at the bottom of his milkshake glass. “She went through so much and created such wonderful art…I’m awed. Keith. This woman is fascinating.”

“She was bisexual, too,” added Keith. Lance spooned cream into his mouth, smiling around the utensil. “I didn’t know that, but it’s kind of important, isn’t it?”

“You read my texts! I kind of thought you would just ignore them,” Lance licked the whipped cream off his lips and began gesturing. He missed a spot, and Keith had to force himself to pay more attention to what Lance was saying and not the remaining dessert topping on his upper lip. “And yeah it’s important. Not just to me, a small bi, but to history. We live in this heteronormative world that wipes people’s actual sexualities from the history books. Which is part of why it’s not part of the norm, because all the examples are forgotten, or not taught about.”

“You seem excited for your art history class,” said Keith, plucking a napkin from the dispenser and handing it to Lance.

“What’s this for?” he asked. Keith pointed to his own lip, and then to Lance’s—he got the hint and wiped the whipped cream away. “Yeah, I am excited. It wasn’t really my first choice, though—there was this film class I wanted to take for my arts credit. My RA took it last year and raves about it. All you do is watch movies and discuss them—cinematography, score, impact.”

“Look at the cinnamon tography,” said Keith. Lance gestured at him with the maraschino cherry he’d fished out of his glass, clucking his tongue in mock disapproval.

“Stop memeing. I’m enthusing,” he said. “Anyway, they watched _Rocky Horror_ and got to have a whole-class discussion on sexuality and it sounded amazing, so I wanted in. Rolo—that’s my RA—agrees with me that viewing _Rocky Horror Picture Show_ in all its nonsensical, outdated glory is practically a rite of passage. It’s a shit-show, but it’s entertaining and important and I love it.”

“I’ve never seen it,” said Keith. “Foster parents. The last ones thought they could shelter me from the world that I’d already seen, as if ten months with them was going to wipe away fifteen years in the system.”

“Yikes,” Lance said. “You weren’t out, then.”

“Nah. I was out to Shiro, and that was it,” Keith shrugged, fiddling with the straw in his soda glass. “I didn’t even tell the nice lesbians who had me before the Keatons did, but I think they knew. I sort of had a boyfriend.”

“Oooh. What was his name?” Lance leaned forward, his chin in his hand, smiling as if he was about to get all the juiciest gossip.

“Henry. I didn’t stay in that school very long, though, so it didn’t work out.”

“I dated a Henrietta in high school. Then her brother beat me up,” Lance said casually, leaning back against the booth. Keith must’ve looked shocked, because Lance smiled and patted his hand reassuringly. “It wasn’t too bad. It was just because he’d heard a true rumor that I was bi and a false one that I sucked dick in the bathroom. She didn’t really seem to care that he went after me, though, which I guess meant she believed it. Whatever, though, it wasn’t too far off. Holy crow, you’re turning red. Too much information, right? Sorry.”

Lance talked a lot about things that Keith didn’t necessarily want to know. But here he was, and now he knew.

“I’ll spare you the details,” said Lance, putting on an air of pretention, a mockery of someone’s straight-laced British grandmother who’d just let slip something scandalous. Keith rubbed at his face, which felt warm to the touch, and laughed despite himself. Lance dropped the act, grinning. “You know we have to watch _Rocky Horror_ now, right? I can’t let this slide.”

“Why?”

“You’re a gay kid in college who’s never seen the iconic _Rocky Horror Picture Show_. It really is a rite of passage, Keith.” Lances spoon clinked against his glass as he emptied out the last of it. “My place or yours, Mullet?”

“Don’t say it like that,” said Keith, pushing his hand back through his hair. “Your dorm is in Garrison, yeah? It’s closer, and I can get Shiro to pick me up after.”

Lance grinned, looking ridiculously satisfied.

After they both paid their checks, the two started back towards campus. It was dark already, despite the relatively early hour—that was late autumn for you. Keith stole glances at Lance as they passed under streetlamps, when his face was illuminated and looking vaguely angelic, a notion Keith threw away the second a horrible joke came out of Lance’s mouth. The way he laughed at Keith’s blush in the face of his crudeness was downright devilish.

Watching the movie was the same—Lance thought Keith’s reactions to the more sexual elements of the film were hilarious, though Keith knew he was only as flustered as he was because he was watching and hearing those things with Lance _right next to him_. Squished together against Lance’s headboard, the laptop on a pile of pillows a couple feet away.

Keith didn’t let his nerves keep him from asking questions and pointing out places where the plot made no sense, only to be shushed…though Lance was one to talk, since he sang along with every song.

“It would be blasphemy not to sing,” he argued.

By the end, Keith was thoroughly shocked but also somewhat fascinated. He told Lance this, to which the other boy had replied, “I’m pretty sure that’s the point.”

He felt sort of the same way about the entire night—compelled, interested, but also reeling. When he finally climbed into the passenger seat of Shiro’s minivan, Lance standing at the door to his dorm hall waving energetically and Shiro smiling smugly at him, Keith just heaved a heavy sigh.

“Is it too late for me to just, leave society and live in a cave?”

“Don’t be silly,” said Shiro as he peeled away from the curb and started driving towards their apartment. “Your boyfriend would miss you.”

For that, Keith stole Shiro’s favorite shampoo and chucked it into the dumpster outside their apartment building.  

 ****

The weekend came quickly, but Lance was tired. His brain was fried, his backpack crammed full of homework, his sleep schedule fucked over because he stayed up to do homework or to hang out with Hunk and Pidge or, of all things, to text with Keith.

When Allura asked him for his drink order that day, he passed up both soda and a milkshake in favor of coffee, coffee, coffee in a travel cup so he could carry it over to the corner with him when he went to play Voltron.

Keith had upped the stakes, earning the extra 500 points he had needed to beat the level, and then leaving it there for Lance to reach. Lance had figured out by now that he did it on purpose—he could probably set the high score much higher, but he wanted to see Lance get close before he advanced.  

After a round or two, Keith appeared and leaned against the side of the game cabinet, his arms folded over his chest. Occasionally, he would lean forward to peer around the side at the monitor, but mostly he watched Lance as he played. For the most part, Lance didn’t think much about the steady gaze Keith fixed him with, focusing instead on beating the level and sailing into the next.

“You can use other lions now,” said Keith when the level marker changed in the corner of the screen. “Red and green. Those are the arms.”

Lance started smashing the buttons, noting the way Keith laughed shortly and continued smiling after the fact. It was a tiny tilt of his mouth, but it was there, and Lance lived for it. Keith, smiling, all soft around the edges. He looked at Lance just to look, like he hadn’t already seen Lance a million times, like Lance was worth looking at.

Lance knew that when it came to Voltron, what he lacked in skill he made up for in enthusiasm. He thrived on the knowledge that it was his enthusiasm and energy that seemed to make Keith smile at him like that. He ran his mouth continuously as he played towards Keith’s newer high score.

“Honestly, I’m so pumped for Thanksgiving,” Lance was saying. “I so need a break. Like. It’s time for the Lance squadron to regroup.”

Keith chuckled. “Hmm. Yeah, the break will be nice.”

“It’s been forever since I’ve been home,” Lance sighed wistfully. “I miss everything about it. It’s wild, sometimes, with all of us home…but it’s warm and quiet sometimes in a way that college isn’t. It doesn’t come close.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Yeah. And we get to see the cousins over Thanksgiving, so it’s a fucking madhouse,” Lance laughed, jamming buttons to shoot down a Galra ship. “What are you guys doing for Thanksgiving? I meant to ask Shiro, but I guess I forgot.”

“Oh, uh,” Keith shifted his weight awkwardly, “I’m not doing anything.”

“What about Nana? You guys don’t spend it with her?”

“Shiro is going. But they’re going up to his Auntie’s house…a bunch of family who doesn’t know me,” he said. “I don’t really have a place there. It’s okay, I’ll have them for Christmas.”

“That’s shit.”

“I mean, yeah. Part of it is that I’m a stranger, but it’s mostly that they’ve got me profiled as some kind of delinquent. Nana wanted to fight tooth and nail to get me a seat at their table, but…” Keith sighed heavily. “For some reason they think because Shiro had great parents who died he’s fine, but a kid who had shitty ones that didn’t take care of him is bound to be a criminal.”

“A smooth criminal,” said Lance. He thought to himself, _criminally good looking_ , but thought better than to say it out loud.

Keith laughed.

“Dude, I’ll send you live updates from my Thanksgiving. It’s going to be lit,” Lance went on. “So my cousin Mari has this super conservative republican boyfriend she’s bringing to dinner, right? I mean, number one, that’s just a bad idea. Take this guy who’s clearly a bigot home to your family of Cuban immigrants. And her brother Eddie, he’s gay as they come. Like, where’s the logic there? She’s obviously with him because he’s hot—I’ve seen his pictures on Facebook. Anyway, me and Ed are basically planning to team up against this fucker. Like _Cheaper By the Dozen_ but gayer.”

“How is that like _Cheaper By the Dozen_?” Keith asked.

“Dastardly plots to get rid of Ashton Kutcher. They soaked his underwear in meat, remember? Except instead we’ll be dropping comments and talking shit in Spanish the whole time and it will be hilarious. My old friend from high school even offered to be my fake boyfriend for a day so we could make out on the couch in front of Tim. That’s the guy’s name. _Tim._ ”

Keith didn’t say anything when Lance paused, so he looked over to see that Keith was glaring at a spot on the tile beneath his feet. As he turned away from the game, he missed a moment where he should have dodged and the lion sustained a fatal hit. He saw the _GAME OVER_ screen but didn’t look away from Keith.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“Nothing,” he replied gruffly, his tone considerably darker than before. Lance didn’t want to push it, so he withdrew his probing and redirected his attention to the leaderboard.

“Aw, shit,” Lance sighed. He’d been close enough to make it if he’d been paying attention. “No problem, there’s always the next game.” He dug through his pockets for another coin. “You know, I really spend a shit-ton of money on this, it’s kind of ridiculous.”

“Then don’t fucking play. It’s just a stupid game, what’s the point?” Keith said sharply, lifting his head to look at Lance now. There was heat there, taking Lance completely off guard. “You act like beating the high score is some big deal, but it’s fucking not, Lance.”

Lance felt the venom of Keith’s voice seep into his veins. He put his quarter back in his pocket, drawing away from the game and away from Keith. Stunned. Speechless. He had not expected Keith to go from soft to sharp in a second, had not expected him to cut at Lance like that. Nor did he expect it to hurt as much as it did, and it only got worse as the silence brewed between them.

“It’s really _not_ a big deal,” he said finally, but he wondered if Keith could hear him, his voice came out so weak. “I’m just having fun. I’m sorry.”

Lance shoved his hands in his pockets and turned his back on Keith, heading back to the table. He heard Keith’s footsteps in the opposite direction, and by the time he had returned to the table the other boy had disappeared behind the swinging kitchen door. Hunk looked up when he slid back into the booth, following his gaze.

When he turned back, he nudged Lance’s foot with his leg.

“Hey, what’s up?” asked Hunk. Lance picked up a French fry from his plate and nibbled at it. The taste of it was satisfying enough, but he didn’t feel like eating more—his appetite for his burger and fries had waned significantly.

“I don’t know. I think…I think talking about my family upset him?” Lance put the fry back down on his plate and picked at the lettuce that poked out of his burger bun. “He doesn’t have anyone to spend Thanksgiving with. I think I accidentally rubbed it in his face.”

Beside him, Pidge didn’t look up from their laptop or make any move to take off their headphones. They were completely absorbed in their work, and Lance was frankly a bit glad. Pidge was a lot less supportive than Hunk in some ways, and they usually didn’t have time for Lance’s shit. They preferred to leave him to clean up after himself.

“It’s okay,” said Hunk. Lance’s other hand was drumming nervously against the table—Hunk lifted it and slid his own hand under, palm up, so Lance was poking at the soft flesh of Hunk’s hand instead of the cold table. It was comforting, in a small way, stimulating because of the movement and the human touch involved. “I know you didn’t mean to. I’m sure Keith realizes that too—if you just give him some time to cool down, then you can apologize.”

Lance looked at the kitchen door—he wished he could push beyond it, find Keith in whatever maze was behind it and pull him into a bony Lance hug. It wasn’t worth much, but Hunk always said it made him feel better, even though Lance was made of sticks. Another part of him wondered whether Keith would care if he tried to comfort him, if he cared that Lance wanted to apologize. It wouldn’t matter if Lance didn’t matter.

Lance wasn’t sure he had any proof that it would matter. Maybe, all this time, he’d just been an annoyance to Keith. A tick on his back that kept griping at Keith about a video game, ruining something he loved.

When Keith finally reemerged, Lance still hadn’t started eating. He looked up from playing with his fork when he heard the door to the back of the diner open, watching as Keith pushed out into the main part of the restaurant. He didn’t look especially angry—he wore the same unaffected look he usually did, a sort of resting bitch face. But Lance had grown accustomed to seeing him smile, so this felt wrong.

Fear twisted knots in his stomach, gluing him to his seat until Keith drew nearer. Despite the few dirty dishes on their table, he made like he was going to pass right by them. Lance reached out and grabbed the edge of his busboy bin, curling his fingers around the edge of the plastic to keep him there.

“What.”

“Keith, I’m sorry,” he said. Keith shook his head.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s nothing wrong,” he said, tonelessly. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to get back to work now.”

He tugged his bin away and slipped out of Lance’s grasp.

Pidge finally looked up, looking between Keith’s receding form, Lance’s slumped shoulders, and the uneaten burger on the table.

“What’d you do to piss him off?” they asked. Pidge jerked as Hunk kicked them under the table. “What? Is it my fault he’s too annoying for his own good sometimes?”

“Pidge,” Hunk chided. Lance didn’t react outwardly, instead feeling everything in him shrink further inside. “Read the room.”

Lance slipped a few bills out of his wallet and put them on the table. “That should cover this. I’m just…I’m just gonna go home.”

“Lance, come on,” Hunk reached out to him as he got up, but Lance skirted away.

“I’m fine,” he insisted. “I’ve got work to do anyway.”

As Lance made his way to the door, Keith glanced his way. His brows furrowed as if in confusion, but Lance only saw it for a moment before he had walked out onto the sidewalk. His bike helmet was under his arm, but he put it on as he approached the post where he’d locked up Blue, fastening the straps tightly under his chin.

Lance rode away from the diner and pretended his eyes were only watering because of the wind in his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I was planning this I nicknamed it "the salty scene" because Keith goes from 0 salt to 100 real fast.  
> There's a very specific reason he's salty--it didn't happen until after Lance elaborated on his plans to make Tim uncomfortable, so it must've been something Lance said....


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is 100% pining Keith and I'm not sorry.

Keith’s Monday morning class was held in the windowless lecture hall in the main academic building on campus, which was dark and warm and perfect for sleeping—so Keith spent the whole class struggling not to drift off. When he finally emerged into the lit hallway, he could see that the weather had changed for the worse in the hour that he’d been inside. It was pouring outside, an onslaught of rain against the windows that lined the corridor, bringing extra gloom into a morning that was already shit.

He wasn’t about to try to walk home in this weather, so Keith flipped up his hood and walked quickly to the Union building to grab a snack before hunkering down in a corner to study until his afternoon class.

He was in line at the register, with a little carton of milk and a pack of skittles in his hand and cash in the other, when Hunk walked into the store. Keith had half a mind to drop everything and run, because Hunk’s good-natured expression grew several degrees darker at the sight of him.

He never would’ve thought he’d be scared of Hunk until after Lance had left on Saturday. After finishing their food and getting a box for Lance’s, Hunk and Pidge made to leave—that was, until Hunk saw Keith reemerge from the kitchen. He’d gone from Lance’s cheerful physics-loving friend that Keith really got along with to a figure of composed darkness that absolutely terrified him. Hunk didn’t get angry, he didn’t yell, he didn’t act threateningly at all. He simply stared Keith in the face and said, “You’re going to talk to Lance. This shit gets resolved as soon as possible, got it?”

“I don’t…” Keith had started to deny it, but Hunk made a frustrated sound before he could finish. It was almost like a growl, and it shook Keith to his bones.

“Don’t say it. _You_ might be able to act like nothing happened, but Lance doesn’t work that way.” Hunk pointed at Keith’s chest, effectively freezing him in place. “I’m not going to preach to you about what you said or how he feels, because that’s a conversation you need to have with him. But here’s my advice: If you want him back at all, you’ve got to _talk to him._ ”

Now it was Monday morning and Keith still hadn’t tried to talk to Lance about what had happened—in part because he wasn’t completely sure what had happened. He’d felt the burn of jealousy, had gotten angry at Lance when he shouldn’t have been, had tried to play it off and ended up fucking up further. He remembered yelling at Lance about the game, but he’d seemed okay after that—Keith didn’t know how it had turned into Lance leaving in tears.

He’d thought about texting, even calling. He’d thought about walking to campus and knocking on Lance’s door. But in the end, he had decided not to, and now it seemed like he couldn’t have made a worse choice.

It was Keith’s turn to pay for his items. He shuffled forward and put them on the counter, watching as the bored cashier scanned his milk instead of looking at Hunk.

Hunk, who was standing near the door, his arms crossed. Keith had to pass him on the way out.

“He’ll see you,” said Hunk as Keith approached the entrance. Keith looked past him and through the glass doors, immediately understanding what Hunk meant. Lance was there in the Union, reclined across one of the worn blue couches with his legs up in the air, in direct view of the convenience store. Keith watched as he slowly kicked his legs through the air as if he were riding his bicycle, oblivious for the moment as he played on his phone.

“And?” Keith asked.

“It’s now or never, man,” Hunk uncrossed his arms and rubbed his forehead with one hand. “I didn’t really explain thoroughly before, because I was so pissed at you, but he has this idea in his head that you don’t give a shit. If he sees you and you don’t come to talk to him? He’s pretty much going to think you don’t want to be his friend anymore.”

_“Oh.”_

“Yeah.”

Well, shit. Keith steeled himself, clutching the bag that held his purchases and pushing open the door to step out into the Union.  He made his way across the large room and was almost there before Lance turned and noticed him—his easy smile completely fell from his face when he realized that Keith wasn’t Hunk, and Keith felt guilt pressing heavily down on his shoulders.

“Uh. Hey,” he said. Lance dropped his phone on the couch beside him and sat up, curling up on one cushion instead of taking up all three. The amount of space he took up physically decreased, but he also seemed to shrink in terms of his presence, too. Keith didn’t know how to properly describe how Lance suddenly seemed so much smaller, but he did.

“Hi,” said Lance. He wrapped his arms around his legs, which were clad in pajama pants printed with little cows and crescent moons.

“Can I sit?”

Lance looked surprised.

“Yeah. I mean, if you want.” He let his arm unfurl to gesture to the now empty spots on the couch beside him. Keith settled on the opposite end, setting his snack bag down between them and resting his hands on his legs as he tried to figure out what to say.

He was apparently taking too long, because Lance spoke before he did.

“Did Hunk make you come talk to me?” he asked, picking at a wrinkle in the fabric of his pants.

“No,” Keith shook his head. “Not really. He just…made me realize that I had to, I guess. I didn’t know how upset you were.”

Lance shrugged. “I’m not that upset.”

“You were crying,” said Keith. “And you think I don’t like you. That’s _upset_.”

“He told you I cried?” Lance turned, finally, a hint of his usual exaggeration seeping into his voice. “I’ve been betrayed.”

“No, you were crying when you left. I saw,” Keith leveled his gaze with Lance’s and saw how his eyes searched Keith’s face, how the layers of his exterior self had been peeled back—this was not dramatic, obnoxious, ridiculous Lance. This was too much heart shoved into one person with a vast underestimation of his own worth, and he thought Keith didn’t care about him. Keith, who looked at Lance and saw nothing but _beautiful_.  “Listen, Lance.”

“I’m sorry,” Lance blurted, before Keith could say anything. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, or make you jealous, or anything really. I just was _talking too much_. Like always.”

Keith felt a shiver of panic, thinking for a moment that Lance knew. He couldn’t know, could he? Had he been paying attention when Keith’s mood went sour and pinpointed the exact thing that set him off?

Lance had said he was going to make out with his friend for shits and giggles, and Keith had felt like he’d been carelessly kicked aside. It didn’t make sense—he had no claim to Lance’s affections—but the thought of Lance kissing someone else made him feel like all of his insides were on the floor while he was still standing upright. It was envy and then it was anger, and then when he’d thought it would be fine if he pretended he was fine, it backfired completely.

Keith looked over to see Lance hiding his face behind the baggy sleeves of his hoodie. The faintest tremble of his shoulders told Keith that he was tearing up again, and his heart felt over-pressurized inside his chest.

“I’m not mad at you, Lance,” he said. He hesitated, but when Lance didn’t move he reached over to tug at his sleeve. “Hey, it’s okay. We’re fine, we’re good.”

“I should’ve known not to keep talking about my family,” said Lance. He lifted his head so that his eyes peered over at Keith, but his voice was still muffled by his arm. “I should’ve known you’d feel bad about not having…”

Keith shook his head. He didn’t feel relieved that Lance had misinterpreted his jealousy, but rather focused on reassuring the boy in front of him.

“No, no, it’s okay. I’m used to it,” Keith said, “I’m the one who’s sorry—I was rude for really stupid reasons, and you got hurt. I didn’t mean to hurt you.” _I’m practically in love with you_. “And you don’t talk too much. I _like_ how much you talk.”

Lance unwound his arms and opened them. It took Keith a moment to realize what he wanted, but once it was clear he let himself be tugged closer, let himself be wrapped entirely in Lance. Lance clung to him, so Keith held on almost as tightly.

For a brief moment, it felt like it was possible for Lance to want him back.

Then Hunk appeared with a bag from the convenience store and cleared his throat, jarring the two of them apart. “Good,” he said, restored to his normal sweet temperament. “See, buddy? Everything feels better after a Lance hug.”

Lance smiled and wiped his eyes. His sweatshirt was oversized, and the sleeves covered his hands in that adorable way, filling Keith up with that warm affection that he didn’t know what to do with.

When Lance got to his feet and jumped on Hunk, exclaiming, “Surprise Lance Hug!” Keith had to smile, but at the same time his hand curled into a fist to stop himself from exploding because of how _aggressively cute_ it was.

Hunk offered Keith more snacks to share and invited him to stay and study with them, but Keith passed up the offer, knowing he’d spend too much time obsessing over Lance and how it felt to hold him and how sweet he’d looked after they’d hugged, instead of actually getting any work done.  
Keith retreated to a different part of the Union, feeling strangely at peace with the knowledge that he was completely crazy about Lance, and at this point he was so far gone there didn’t seem to be any kind of way out.

His phone buzzed in his pocket, and when he drew it out he saw the first notification from Lance since Saturday.

 **Lance:** Thank you. I needed that.

 **Keith:** Me too I think.

 **Keith:** I see why Lance hugs are so sought after in these parts

 **Lance:** Lol but Keith hugs are pretty top tier. Except I feel like there’s mullet on me now.

 **Keith:** Good

**** 

Throughout the two remaining weeks before Thanksgiving, Keith began to see Lance more and more. He appeared in the diner without Hunk and Pidge every few days if he knew Keith was working, just to play Voltron and talk.

Sometimes, he would say something particularly ridiculous or particularly charming, and Keith would say, “Shut up.”

“I thought you liked how much I talk,” Lance would reply smugly, apparently unable to let Keith forget what he’d said in the Union. Keith sighed and walked away each time, but he always came back.

Another time, an outlier, Lance quietly asked, “Have I ruined Voltron for you?”

Lance had been spinning and rolling around in Keith’s desk chair while Keith played sprawled out on his bed. He was playing a different game, today—but that didn't seem like enough to prompt the question that Lance had stopped spinning to ask.

Keith looked over, and after a moment of complete shock, said, “No. Of course not. Why would you say that?”

“I…I just. I bug you about it so much.”

Oh. Oh no. Lance looked like he’d looked when Keith had yelled at him in the diner, and when he’d shrunk into himself when Keith approached him in the Union. Keith didn’t have time to reply before Lance was rambling again, looking like he was going to start falling apart at the seams.

“I’m so annoying about all this competition stuff. It was real at first, I really did want to beat you so bad, but now it’s not like that. We’re not rivals, we’re not warring over some game, but sometimes…sometimes I feel like you think I might mean it,” Lance took a deep, quivering breath like he was stopping himself from crying. Keith felt sick. “Like I really want to beat you at something you love so much. Like I really want to destroy you. And I don’t, Keith, I don’t. I can’t—”

“Hey,” Keith said, rolling out of bed and shuffling across his bedroom. Lance had lifted the chair as high as it went, so he was almost at eye level when Keith stood beside him. “Listen to me. You could never ruin it for me, okay? I don’t think of you that way, so stop thinking of yourself that way.”

The second Keith hugged him, Lance burst into tears. He squeezed Keith’s arms with his hands, buried his face in the sleeve of his shirt, and cried for a minute.

After the minute was over, Lance wiped his face with a tissue Keith handed him and sighed. “I’m sorry I’m a mess.”

“Don’t be. Just…just know that I’m glad you dragged me into this so-called rivalry. It’s been really great to share something I really love with someone else, you know?”

Lance sniffled, his eyes still shining and red when he smiled. “Yeah, I know.”

 ****

One night, Keith got a text telling him to drop everything and come to Garrison because Lance had pizza. They’d eaten it cross-legged on the floor of Lance and Hunk’s dorm, while Hunk sat at his desk and took bites between paragraphs of the essay he was working on.

Keith stayed there long after the pizza was gone, watching cartoons on the internet until Shiro texted that he was leaving campus and was going to leave in five minutes with or without Keith and Matt.

Keith had showed up in the parking lot, but Matt was nowhere to be found until he stumbled into the apartment the next morning with a hangover.

 ****

Another time, Lance found him studying late in the science building again. Unlike the time before, when Keith had panicked and left before Lance came back, he stayed and walked back to the Student Union again so Lance could change out of his uniform and punch out for the night. They stayed there and took turns playing on Keith’s DS until it was well into the next morning and Lance was falling asleep on the couch with his head just inches from Keith’s thigh. He couldn’t convince himself to wake Lance up, because of the way he looked with eyes closed and his hair mussed and his lips parted—eventually, he’d just woken himself when his leg jerked out and hit the arm of the couch.

“Why didn’t you wake me?” he’d asked, yawning and rubbing his eyes.

The truth lodged in Keith’s throat, and he almost said it, almost told Lance it was because he looked sweet when he slept and Keith wanted to keep looking. Instead, he said, “Didn’t notice you were asleep, man.”

He hoped it was a believable lie.

 ****

A day before break began, Keith invited Lance to the movie night he was having with Shiro and Matt. Allura would be there, cuddled up with Shiro, and Matt was waiting to hear back from Pidge—eventually, they declined in favor of a robotics club meeting.

When Keith asked Lance, he heard back in seconds. He gave Lance the address and apartment number, and soon enough he was at the door with a bag of Cheeto puffs. Matt praised him for bringing food, but Lance shot him down in an instant. “No, these are mine, fucker. Eat your burnt popcorn.”

He shared the Cheetos with Keith. He also kept poking him during the movie, or nudging Keith’s leg with one foot, or whispering stupid jokes or referencing memes in response to what was happening on screen. As distracting as it was, Keith didn’t mind—at some points, he actually found himself laughing.

Shiro and Allura gave him knowing looks and even flashed a thumbs-up in unison when Lance wasn’t looking. 

When Lance left, Keith shut the door behind him and leaned against it, still awash in the warm buzz that Lance’s energy left in him. Matt walked into the hall and looked at saw him like that, a slow grin spreading across his face. “Dude, you’re gay.”

“Whatever. It’s not like that’s news.” Keith rubbed the shoulder that Lance had touched on his way out the door, faking that he was massaging a knot in it when Matt gave him a look.

“The part where you have a big gay crush on _Lance_ is news,” Matt laughed. “I don’t know if Pidge would be amused or grossed out.”

“If you tell I’ll gut you.”

“Don’t worry about it, man,” Matt laughed. “I’m a vault. Allura comes over all the time and I don’t tell her about her birthday surprise, and that’s _huge_. I can keep this shit a secret.”

“What are you two talking about?” asked Allura, emerging from the living room. Matt took one look and booked it down the hallway. Allura laughed, winked at Keith, and went to the coat closet to get the fluffy winter jacket she’d worn. Keith was ducking into his own room when she called for Shiro, demanding information about what he and Matt had been planning to celebrate her birthday.  

****

The campus was cold and empty, and The Universal barely saw any customers on Wednesday. Keith was cut early, because when there was no one coming in there was nothing for him to do. Allura said this always happened when the students were home for breaks and seemed unconcerned. Keith wasn’t worried, either—he was just bored. Coming home to an empty apartment was nice, and Keith usually thrived on being alone, but part of him missed the way Shiro clanged around in the kitchen every morning and watching movies with Shiro and Matt until Shiro fell asleep, and then Keith and Matt got to watch cryptid documentaries for the rest of the night. 

On Thanksgiving Day, Keith ate at the diner with Allura and Coran and played cards with them for a few hours before going home again. He’d left his phone on the coffee table that morning before leaving for work, and he thought it might’ve been on purpose, on some level. Especially after he began to read through the messages that had been coming in all day.

The ones from Shiro were especially bittersweet.

 **Shiro:** Happy Turkey Day! Nana and I miss u.

 **Shiro:** Auntie keeps trying to set me up with girls from her church. Like I told you like ten times I’m way too busy to start seeing anyone

 **Shiro:** Pictures of dinner on facebook if ur interested

 **Shiro:** Nana friended Lance on facebook and is asking me if he’s your boyfriend I didn’t even think she knew you were gay? help

There was also a slew of them from Lance that detailed the continued campaign against “Shitlord Tim” and a message about friending Nana and looking through the pictures she’d posted of Shiro and Keith when they were younger.

Keith got up from where he sat down on his bed and carried his computer over. He opened his Facebook to find that there were tons of unread notifications, some of them messages from Nana but most of them about posts his friends had been making. Keith looked through Nana and Shiro’s Thanksgiving posts, as well as the ones Lance was tagged in by his family members. On Nana’s page, there were some old pictures that she’d posted that had new likes—of course they were all from Lance. He’d hit Keith’s high school graduation photo, an old picture of Shiro and Keith from just before Shiro and moved in with his grandparents, and a picture of just Keith at Nana’s house over the summer.

The last one had been captioned by Nana “Sweet grandsons visited today. Keith, it has been so long but you are always family! xoxo.” Seeing the post after a few months made Keith feel warm inside all over again.

Because the notifications were older, the pictures that Lance had tagged him in were lower on the list of things to view. One of them was the selfie Lance had taken with him when they’d pulled their all-nighter in the Union, another was Keith picking sausage off a slice of pizza, and the last on the post was the picture he’d taken in the diner. Lots of Lance’s friends had liked them, and Nana had commented about how cute Keith looked.

Lance said he would agree if Keith got a haircut.

None of this would’ve been a big deal if Lance hadn’t captioned the photos as “Keef <3”.

Well that explained why Nana thought Lance was his boyfriend. Lance’s weird affection for everyone apparently had a place in the digital world, which was misleading to people who didn’t know him.

Keith laid back on his bed and let himself pretend that it wasn’t nothing. He let himself pretend he didn’t have to call up Nana—she preferred when he talked to her on the phone, because she didn’t get to hear his voice regularly if he didn’t—and tell her that he and Lance were only friends. That Lance was a goofy, loveable guy who painted Keith’s world with wonder but all that was happening between them was friendship.

When Keith felt less like the universe was hurtling rocks at him he pressed his phone to his ear. Nana answered on the second ring.

 ****

Keith spent most of Friday watching stupid videos and sending links to the ones he thought Lance would like. Allura offered to take him shopping in Chicago, where she was meeting her father and brother for lunch, but he’d politely declined.

Lance called him on Skype, having retreated into his room for the afternoon. When Keith answered the call, Lance was lying on his stomach on his bed with his feet swinging in the air, his head propped up on his arm.

“Did you go shopping?” Keith asked him. Lance nodded.

“You wanna see what I got?” he asked. Keith shrugged, but it was close enough to a yes that Lance broke out in a grin and rolled off screen, a soft thump telling Keith when he hit the ground. Keith squinted at the posters at the head of Lance’s bed while he waited, recognizing a print of the Mona Lisa wearing sunglasses alongside a Star Wars movie poster. 

Lance dropped a few plastic shopping bags on his bed in front of the laptop and then reappeared on Keith’s screen.

He went through his bags and showed Keith his various purchases, ranging from t-shirts to nerdy collectibles. There was a Game Stop bag that he appeared to be saving for last, so Keith felt a tiny rush of excitement go through him when Lance finally got to it.

“This is the best thing,” said Lance. He reached inside and pulled out a wad of black fabric which he unraveled and held up beside him. “Ta-da!”

It was a t-shirt depicting the red lion from Voltron. Lance turned it around to reveal the words _Voltron Legendary Defender_ —the title of the new game that had been released that day—printed across the back

“They didn’t have blue, but we could’ve been matching if they did,” said Lance. “Anyway, this is technically for Christmas but I know you don’t mind early gifts.”

“What?” asked Keith. Lance wiggled the shirt in his face.

“It’s for you, you dumb Mullet-head. Why would _I_ wear the red lion?” Lance rolled his eyes and dropped the shirt on the bed. He pushed the shopping bags off of his bed, moving on quickly from the declaration while Keith was still blinking at his screen, stunned. “I also bought the game, but I’m probably not going to play it until I come back.”

“You got me that?”

“Yeah,” said Lance, kicking the last of his bags away and leaning back down to be close to the screen. “Anyway, I made Shitlord Tim walk into Hot Topic. It was fucking _gold_. It’s a sensory overload the first time you go in, you know? I’m sure you remember, because you were probably reborn in the dressing room of a Hot Topic.”

“I remember. And yes, that’s what happened. Instead of baptizing me in water they shoved my head into a bin of half-price t-shirts,” said Keith.

“Naturally. Anyway, I could tell right away that Shitlord hated it. The music, the obvious gay shit, the lighting. Everything. It was amazing.” Lance plucked at the fabric of his quilt, a different pattern than the one on his bed in the dorms, but Keith assumed it had also been made by his grandmother. He tilted his head in a way that indicating he was listening to something that Keith couldn’t hear. “I’m being called. I have probably a few more minutes before my mom starts looking for me. What are you doing tomorrow?”

“Nothing. Allura’s not opening up again until everyone’s back.”

“Oh, okay,” Lance was grinning, kicking his legs back and forth. “Well, I’ll see you when I see you, Mullet.”

He signed off, and Keith went back to his videos.


	8. Chapter 8

The idea had struck him Friday afternoon, when he’d Skyped with Keith. Lance was going on and on about his shopping trip, encouraged by Keith’s smile; every time he felt like he should shut up, he remembered that Keith liked that he talked. Someone actually liked the thing about him that annoyed everyone else on the planet—even Lance himself thought he talked too much—and Lance was caught up in the novelty of it.

But Keith said it was good. He said that it made up for Keith himself being on the quieter side. Lance liked that they complemented each other like that. Lance also liked that when he asked the right questions, Keith opened up like floodgates, his eyes lighting up as his passions poured from his lips.  It wasn’t always easy to get Keith to talk, but when he did Lance could listen for hours. Watching Keith on the other side of his Skype call made Lance wish he had hours to spend with this boy, to talk and to listen and to make him laugh.

He especially wanted more time because he knew Keith was alone, that the second he signed off and went to join his family for dinner, Keith would be by himself again.

Lance found himself wishing that he could be there. He wanted to sit at Keith’s side and put that smile on his face that he so deserved to wear, to smash the silence of the empty apartment with a hammer, to direct Keith’s attention away from the absence of his family. As much as Lance looked up to Shiro and respected his grandmother, anger bubbled up inside him when he thought of the way they’d left him to spend the holiday alone, even if it was a stupid US holiday. If Lance’s family could all get together and be thankful for each other, ignoring most of Thanksgiving’s traditions alongside its racist roots, then Keith’s should make sure he got to celebrate, too. He wanted to kick down the door and take Keith by the shoulders and tell him that they were idiots for letting him be excluded, that he was loved and wanted, that Auntie Whatever hadn’t let him into her family but that Lance was happy to let Keith into his.

Thinking about it drew attention to the feeling he had in that spot, right between his ribs, the one that meant Lance wanted a little bit more than that. That he didn’t merely wish to pull Keith into his circle, into the family made of friends and the family that had made him. He also wanted to fit Keith’s fingers in the spaces between his own and to press his face into Keith’s stupid hair and to make Keith laugh _every day_.

So he asked what Keith was doing on Saturday. He’d already constructed half a plan, but it relied heavily on Keith’s answer.

“Nothing. Allura’s not opening up again until Monday when everyone’s back,” said Keith, pushing his hair out of his face. Lance caught his eyes and grinned, watching the way Keith mirrored his smile ever so slightly. _Perfect,_ he thought.

After Lance signed off, before his mother began looking for him to drag him into the kitchen, he pulled up his internet browser and looked up bus schedules. There was a coach bus heading up towards Chicago that would be making a stop in Altea, close enough to the campus that he could walk to Keith’s place.

Lance took a picture of the schedule information on his phone before buying a round trip ticket.

The next morning, Lance intercepted his sister Veronica in the hallway and asked her to drive him to the bus station on her way to the gym. She looked at him like he was insane.

“It’s like nine in the morning,” she said. “On a Saturday. How are you even awake?” She eyed his combed hair and the cardigan he’d found in the back of a drawer that was blissfully unwrinkled because he’d ironed it twenty minutes before. Veronica amended her question: “ _How long_ have you been awake?”

“Long enough. If it wasn’t too far to walk, I wouldn’t ask,” he said, rocking back on his heels and gripping the straps of his backpack. “C’mon, Nica. Don’t you loooovee meeee?”

“Yes, but you’re a shit. Can you wait five minutes for me to get breakfast?”

He could. He bounced around the kitchen while she ate her yogurt and fruit and told her all about his plans to surprise Keith, but he did it patiently.

“Jesus, Lance,” said Veronica as she followed him out to her car. “What’s the point of going back to Altea for a few hours today when you have to be back in three days anyway?”

“Well it’s not a surprise if Keith knows I’m back in town, is it?” asked Lance as he climbed into the passenger seat of his sister’s car. She situated herself in her seat and began to check her mirrors. “My reasons are not entirely selfless, I must admit. I also just want to beat his ass in the new Voltron game.”

“I feel slightly grossed out by your competition kink,” said Veronica without looking at him, keeping her eyes on the road as she pulled out of the driveway and started towards the transportation depot.

Lance made a loud noise in protest. “That is _not_ what it is. I just enjoy a healthy competition among _friends_.”

“Friends. Right.” She smirked. “Sorry, I thought I saw something else in you when you talked about him. My mistake.”

Lance huffed. He kind of hated that she was right. She didn’t even know how right she was. He’d put on his Nice Jeans and ironed a cardigan, he was getting on a bus for two hours just to see him, he wanted to press his face into a pillow and scream when he thought about the cute little confused face that Keith would make when Lance arrived.

Having feelings for Keith wasn’t weird or new exactly—they’d crept slowly into his system, like watercolor paint spreading across the page. He was not taken by surprise by them, but rather accepted them quickly into his reality. _Of course_ he liked Keith. Stupid Keith, with his face and his hair and his irritable streak and his love for Voltron and cryptid documentaries.

No, the feelings themselves didn’t bother Lance. It was how real they were, how present, how much they mattered. It meant it would hurt if his hopes, which were so high he couldn’t see them, came crashing down.

Veronica pulled into the parking lot in front of the transportation center. She turned to Lance, who was leaning against the window and staring at his backpack on his lap.

“Do you have a ticket?” she asked. He nodded. “You know when you can catch a bus back?” Again, Lance nodded. “Hey, are you nervous?”

Lance looked at her. “Suddenly, I am. What if he doesn’t want to see me, Nica?”

“Friends?” she asked again. Lance rubbed the back of his neck and felt his face flush. His sister laughed softly. “Okay, so it’s more complicated than that. So what are you going for? To keep him company, or to smooch him?”

“The first one.”

“Then do that. Worry about how much you want to smooch him later,” she said. “Now get out of my car, you have a bus to catch.”

 ****

Keith sat on the couch with a bowl of cereal, five minutes into an episode of _MythBusters_. It was almost noon, but he’d just woken up and wandered out into the apartment, still drowsy as he munched on Matt’s coco puffs. Keith was just groggy enough that he wasn’t worried about Matt slaying him in his sleep for finishing off the box.

The knock on the door took Keith by surprise—he stared blankly in its direction for a solid minute, trying to gauge whether it was actually his door and not a neighbor’s. After it sunk in that yes, someone was definitely knocking insistently, Keith got up and dragged himself to the door, still holding his bowl.

He opened it and blinked several times, clearing the sleep out of his eyes.

Lance was standing there, in his doorway, holding up a plastic case and wearing the most adorable shit-eating grin. Upon closer inspection, Keith saw that he had brought the new Voltron game they’d been talking about.

“Look what I bought!” Lance wiggled it in his face, and Keith took it, examining the case. He turned it over to look at the screenshots of gameplay on the back.

“Don’t you live like two hours away?” Keith asked. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, I wanted to play it with you. I was going to wait, but I’m super impatient, so here I am!”

“Oh. Okay,” Keith’s mind was reeling, but he forced himself to smile and step back from the door. “Come in, I guess.”

“Keith, are you eating dry cereal?” he asked as he walked into the apartment. “You heathen.”

“I was too lazy for milk,” said Keith, closing the door with his foot and following Lance as he walked into the living room, dumping his backpack and coat on the couch. “And the jug is almost empty, so if it’s gone when he gets back Shiro will nag me about drinking it.

“Why? Isn’t it your milk too?”

“I’m lactose intolerant, which he thinks means I’ll die if I even touch dairy.”

Lance turned around to face him, planting his hands on his hips. “You can’t eat ice cream?”

Keith was still juggling the game and his bowl. Lance made grabby hands at him, so he handed over the case and moved past Lance to sit on the couch.

“I eat ice cream, and cheese, and all of that stuff. I just shouldn’t without taking a pill,” Keith said, watching as Lance started picking at the plastic that was still wrapped around his video game. “I still do it and just hate myself afterwards.”

“You wanna play now, or you wanna finish your horrible sin breakfast first?”

“Horrible sin breakfast?” Keith laughed and set his bowl down on the floor, before standing up and stretching his arms out above his head as he yawned with embarrassing volume. His shirt rode up, so Keith hurried to drag it back down as he felt Lance’s eyes on him. “We can play, I just need coffee first. You want coffee?”

Lance’s eyes followed him as he shuffled towards the kitchen, rummaging around to find the bag of coffee before shoving a filter in haphazardly and scooping out an amount that seemed right. He filled the pot with water and pressed the appropriate buttons. Lance was still watching without saying anything, and Keith scrubbed his hand over his mussed hair self-consciously.  

“ _Lance._ ”

“Hmm?”

“Do you want coffee?”

“Oh! Uh, sure,” Lance grinned and turned back to the case in his hands, popping it open and taking out the disk. It was Keith’s turn to watch quietly as the other boy stooped down in front of the entertainment center to insert the game into Shiro’s PlayStation. Just like that, Lance was talking again, “So like. I was all over the online reviews for this last night. Apparently, the designs are really great compared to the old versions. You can customize your character, too! Oh, this is honestly going to be so much fun, I’m totally gonna make my guy the best sharpshooter in the fucking universe…”

Lance went on, backing up towards the couch with a controller and sitting there cross legged as he scrolled through the menus that the system presented him with. Between the whirring of the coffee maker and the fact that he was more interested in the lines of Lance’s profile than what he was saying, Keith missed most of the babbling. He registered that Lance was excited, that Lance had jumped into this thing that Keith loved so eagerly, that Lance was _here_ and not at home with his family so he could play this game.

When the coffee pot was done, Keith poured them both a mug and brought them over to the living room. Without even having to ask, he went back to the kitchen to retrieve milk and sugar for Lance.

Keith discovered momentarily that Lance was a one and a half sugar kind of guy, and he downed the remaining sugar in the packet without flinching, smacking his lips happily as it dissolved on his tongue. Keith had the slightest urge to see if he could taste the sugar on Lance’s lips, but he smashed it down. Sitting down beside Lance and sipping his coffee, he peered at the screen.

Lance handed him the red controller, without Keith having to tell him that it was his preferred one. He guessed his favorite color was pretty obvious by now.

They took a while going through all of the customization options with their characters, eventually determining what planet they were from and what their weapons turned into—Lance’s Bayard was a laser gun of some sort, and Keith’s avatar carried a sword and dagger. After a quick tutorial that Lance almost skipped, the two of them jumped into gameplay. For a while, it was just navigating controls and fighting off Galran robot monsters, but eventually Lance complained that they were on the same side and there was no way he could destroy Keith in story mode.

There was, however, a training mode where the paladin avatars could fight against robots or against one another. Keith grudgingly agreed to switch modes—it wasn’t really his game, after all—and Lance did a ridiculous little dance before he changed over to the training mode.

As the tables turned against Keith, Lance’s boastful tendencies came out to play. The red paladin would occasionally win a match, but his comebacks didn’t last—Lance shot him down within an inch of his life and laughed loudly over the sound of Keith’s cursing.

“What? How did you do that?” Keith shouted over the sound of Lance’s character shooting him down with a critical attack that he wasn’t sure he remembered seeing in the tutorials.  Lance looked over, smiling smugly as he watched Keith lament his loss. There was also something else in the crinkles around his eyes, which made Keith pause, trying to decipher what it might be.

“Keith, I have to tell you something.”

He worked his jaw, looked down at his controller and then back up at Keith. For a moment, he seemed hushed and serious, but it was short-lived.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve played.”

“You’ve fucking played this before,” Keith said, pausing the game and lowering his controller, glaring at Lance. “That’s practiced. You fucking fuck.”

“Okay, when I said I waited, I meant I waited to play my copy. Eddie had the pre-release, and he wanted to play it and it was only in the training mode….” Lance babbled. He sighed and set his controller on the floor near his empty mug. “So I guess I was kind of… _lion_.”

Keith couldn’t muster words—combined with his anger, the smile that followed Lance’s ridiculous pun made his blood rush to his face. The only think he could think to do was toss aside his controller and tackle Lance, pushing him over onto the carpet and pinning him down with an arm across his chest. Lance shrieked, his limbs flailing and knocking what remained of Keith’s cereal across the floor.

“Hey, hey,” Lance was gasping for breath. “Oww.”

Keith immediately pulled back, lessening the pressure against Lance’s body. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Did I hurt you?”

Lance wheezed, and Keith tried to withdraw himself completely, but they were tangled together. Lance’s legs tightened around one of his and he felt a tug at his scalp, because long fingers had grabbed onto his hair on the way down.

“I’m laughing, Keith,” said Lance, his eyes bright, “I’m fine. Chill.”

“Oh, in that case.” Keith pressed his hand into Lance’s face, muffling the laughter that still bubbled out of him. Lance wriggled beneath him, clutching at his t-shirt, pulling his hair in a weak attempt to fight back. “I’m going to kill you.”

“You can’t kill me, I’m a bad bitch.” he said, dislodging Keith’s hand from his face with a few jerks of his head. He followed this with a breathless explanation Keith didn’t need. “Get it? It’s from that vine.”

“I get it. It’s stupid and dumb.”

“Redundancy at its finest,” said Lance. His fingers burrowed deeper into Keith’s hair, but he wasn’t pulling anymore—it was a soft pressure against his scalp, and Keith felt melty. He tried to pull away again, but Lance held him there, grinning. That grin that Keith felt slowly becoming his _axis mundi_ , the center of his entire world, this shining, sacred thing that rejuvenated him and killed him at the same time. Pining for Lance had turned his thoughts into the highest level of hyperbole, and he didn’t even care anymore.

His impulses surged forward, begging him to stop waiting, and he didn’t care to stop them. The air was too charged, Keith’s thoughts too focused on Lance’s legs pressed against his and the hand that was almost cradling his head and Lance’s face—God, his face. Before he really thought about what might happen, before he could second-guess himself or read the context differently or feel anything else but _this_ , Keith was leaning down closer. He was brushing his nose against Lance’s, his eyes fluttering closed, breath colliding with breath.

Lance caught on quickly, a tiny gasp passing from between his lips. He didn’t pull away, didn’t tell Keith not to, just tilted his head ever so slightly _towards_ Keith without completely closing the distance. As if he wasn’t sure, either, but he _wanted to._

“Keith,” Lance murmured, and Keith opened his eyes to see that Lance was peering at him through his long lashes. “Are you going to kiss me or are you just brooding really close to my face?”

Keith grunted. “Yeah.” And he leaned in. His hand moved from the side of Lance’s face to the floor beside his head, anchoring Keith as he pressed his lips against Lance’s. Lance responded in earnest, hands sliding down to hold both sides Keith’s face, the pressure of his mouth on Keith’s indulgent and soft. For all Lance’s intensity—he was all forceful personality, blinding smiles, wild gestures and exaggeration—he was the gentlest kisser.

“Keith?” he whispered, drawing back. His head settling back onto the floor.

“Yes?” Keith took Lance’s hand from the side of his own face and held it. Lance’s eyes were wide and full of awe, a breathy giggle slipping out when Keith pressed a kiss to his palm.

“Is it gay if you start making out with your bitter rival?”  

He squashed Lance’s giddy laughter with another kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, amirite?


	9. Chapter 9

“Keeeith,” Lance whined into Keith’s ear as he nuzzled against the side of his face. “Pay attention to meee.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Keith turned away from the TV, leaning slightly away from Lance so he could see his face. “That was a really cool part.”

Lance drew him back in with the hand still curled into Keith’s hair, capturing his lips and making a soft sound of contentment. Keith’s arms were already draped loosely around Lance’s waist, so he wound them tighter around Lance and eased him closer. He was practically in Keith’s lap when he pulled away, saying, “Now that’s more like it.”

“You’re needy,” Keith said, laughter in his voice as he looked up at Lance. “But I think I like you anyway.”

“Ooooh,” Lance crooned, mussing Keith’s hair. “You like me!”

Keith sighed, but leaned into his touch anyway, his mouth dragging gently over Lance’s cheekbone before he kissed him on the lips again, his hands sliding up and down the other’s back. Lance’s tongue was soft as he parted Keith’s lips with it, his hands sliding down the sides of Keith’s neck and resting on his chest. He was sure Lance could feel the way his heart pounded at the touch, judging by the smile that tugged at his mouth as their kiss deepened.

“Fuck it,” Keith grumbled, pulling away to drag Lance into his lap. The yelp that slipped out of Lance made him pause, asking, “Sorry, is this okay?”

He’d withdrawn his hands, hovering above Lance’s hips carefully, not touching in case the answer was no. Lance, flushed in the face and breathing hard, seemed to take a moment to find his voice. Or to determine his answer. Keith wasn’t sure.

“Yes,” Lance said finally, breathlessly, taking Keith’s face between his hands and pressing a kiss to the creased skin of his brow. He felt himself relax under Lance’s touch, reaching out to hold onto him again. “You just surprised me, babe.”

“Babe?”

“Mhhhmmm,” Lance gave him a soft kiss that he cut short too quickly. “Is _that_ okay? I could call you something else.”

Keith was head-over-heels for Lance as he was most of the time—a whirlwind. He was warm, wild energy with a big mouth and a natural ability to make Keith laugh. But Keith held a certain fondness for this softer side of him, too. Instead of spectating, he felt personally drawn into Lance’s world, like he had a place carved out for him. Like even if they weren’t making out, even if Keith hadn’t opened up this door and pulled Lance through it, Lance wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

“Yeah,” he answered. “It’s okay. I think I like it.”                                                                            

Lance grinned and kissed Keith’s face, everywhere he could reach, and only once he’d provided sufficient coverage did he return his attentions to Keith’s mouth. At this point, Keith was gasping for it, and once Lance’s lips were on his he pushed everything he was feeling, everything he had, into the kiss. The quiet noises of pleasure that Lance made only fueled Keith’s passion, and his hands crept up to push the cardigan off Lance’s shoulders –“It’s too hot anyway,” Lance rasped as he came up for air, and Keith pressed lips to his sharp jawline instead—and somehow Lance’s fingers had pushed up the hem of Keith’s t-shirt.

“God, when you stretched earlier? This rode up,” said Lance, watching Keith’s face as his hands wandered over the flesh just over the waist of his pajama pants. “I thought I was going to die. You’re too pretty, God help me.”

“You don’t seem close to death right now,” said Keith.

“I still feel like I hit my head on something and this is just a dream.”

Keith slid his hands up through Lance’s hair and brought their mouths together again, and again, and again. Lance breathed into his lungs and he breathed into Lance’s, crowding up against one another, each kissing like the other was the elixir to save the world.

“Shit, wait,” said Lance, wrenching his mouth away. Keith’s hands froze in their track up Lance’s spine, pushed under his red Henley. “You weren’t jealous about my family, you were mad because I said I was gonna make out with Brad!”

Keith breathed. He withdrew his hands from beneath his shirt, hot skin against skin, and draped his arms over Lance’s shoulders. Pressing their foreheads together, he held Lance’s eyes. “Yes. Thinking about someone else kissing you was…well it made me irrationally angry, you know?”

“You were being a big, possessive baby who wanted all of this,” Lance wiggled his butt on Keith’s legs, laughing, “to himself.”

“Lance,” Keith said seriously. “I was being stupid, and it wasn’t fair to you.”

“Doesn’t matter now. It never would’ve happened anyway, babe,” he said, tapping his index finger against Keith’s nose. “We were just having fun with ideas. I’ve been too hung up on you, really, to want to kiss anyone else. Especially not my straight friend Brad, who’s kind of gross anyway. And, come on, his name is _Brad_.”

“You’ve been hung up on me?”

“I thought we established this. You like me. I like you,” Lance laughed. “We’ve been making out on your couch for actual _hours_ now.”

Keith nodded, slipping his arms down and around Lance’s middle, hugging him closer to Keith’s own torso. Lance hummed softly in approval, raking his fingers through Keith’s hair when he laid his head down against his bony shoulder.

“Lance, why did you come if you already played the game?” he asked in a whisper. Lance was quiet for a moment, and Keith wasn’t sure if he had heard.

“Well, because I wanted to see you,” he said. “And because I didn’t want you to be alone.”

“Oh.”

Somehow that meant everything.

 

After a prolonged goodbye kiss in the hallway, Keith finally closed the door behind Lance. When he returned to the living room and turned _MythBusters_ back on—he’d paused it at Lance’s request, because he kept getting distracted by MythBusting when he was supposed to be kissing. His phone was on the end table, lit up with notifications that he’d ignored when Lance was there, preferring to pay attention to him instead. He looked at Shiro’s texts first.

**Shiro:** I didn’t know you were having Lance over today? It’s fine, obviously, I just didn’t know

**Keith:** How’d you know he was here? Wasn’t planned, he just showed up

Shiro texted back quickly.

**Shiro:** He lives kind of far away???

**Shiro:** You’re on his snapchat story

**Keith:** What did he post

Shiro sent a screenshot of the photo, which was of Keith with the puppy filter over his face. It was one of a few different pictures Lance had taken, and he’d boasted that sitting in Keith’s lap gave him a great angle. He’d also sent someone a photo of the two of them kissing, but apparently that one hadn’t been a public post.

Keith kind of wished it was, so he didn’t have to tell anyone. They would just _know_. He also figured Shiro would have sent him a screenshot of that, too, and then he would have it.

**Keith:** Anyway yeah he came over because he knew I was alone

**Keith:** We played video games for a while and then kissed a lot. So that’s a thing.

**Shiro:** I knew it would happen eventually you guys have been dancing around each other since Halloween.

**Shiro:** Are you happy?

**Keith:** Yeah. I’m really happy.

 ****

Shiro was back at home early, hauling his luggage in through the door Monday night instead of Tuesday, which would be the night before classes were supposed to start again. He dropped it in the hallway and made his way right to Keith’s room, walking in and collapsing onto the bed.

Keith was sitting at his desk, so he narrowly avoided being crushed by his brother’s broad frame. He turned in his chair to look at Shiro, who had launched into a description of the passive-aggressive old lady war going on between Auntie and Nana. Keith didn’t really care, since  Auntie had excluded him and Nana had let her, and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t bitter about it. He felt a little better now that Nana was refusing to do any more holidays without Keith, though. Instead of listening to Shiro with his undivided attention, he worked on a paper that was due on Wednesday. There was also a chat window with Lance open, where Lance was practically writing his own essay about the Star Wars prequels.

Shiro eventually went away and ordered pizza for dinner, which Keith emerged to eat.

Instead of bringing up Thanksgiving, Shiro had the sense to talk about things Keith wanted to talk about. Specifically, he asked about Lance, a topic Keith was more than happy to discuss. After dinner, they watched an old movie about aliens and Keith dozed off, draped across the couch with his feet tucked under his brother’s legs.

He woke up when Shiro shook his shoulder and asked if he had any messages from Lance.

“Probably? I don’t know,” his words were slightly slurred with sleep. “Why do you want to know?”

“He’s not coming back to school on time. I got the email that he sent to all his professors, but it doesn’t say what happened,” Shiro’s concern seeped into his voice as he picked up Keith’s phone and started guessing his passcode. Keith groaned and sat up, holding his hand out for the device and opening it easily.

Lance’s text messages were far less rambling and expressive than usual, but they had the answers Shiro was looking for.

**Lance:** Im going to cuba abuela had a heart attack

**Lance:** Flight is leaving its 7 hours goodnight

**Lance:** Don’t know when im coming back but i will text u

Keith felt something in his chest that was decidedly less pleasurable than the way he usually felt when he read Lance’s text messages. It was brittle and precarious and it _hurt_ , even though it wasn’t his hurt. He felt it because of Lance, for Lance.

“Here,” he said, handing the phone to Shiro, who seemed more relaxed after reading the texts. It wasn’t that he was relieved, just that he felt better knowing—Keith knew Shiro hated uncertainty, hated worrying when he didn’t know what he was worried about. He handed the phone back and went to his computer, which was open on the kitchen table. “What are you doing?”   
“I’m going to email his professors. Figure out what they’re willing to do to help him stay caught up.”

“It’s…3 AM.” Keith pushed himself up off the couch and counted the hours until Lance would be on the ground again. He’d texted at 11 or so, so there were still at least two hours left of his flight. “No one is hashing out plans with you at 3 AM. Get some sleep.”

“Are _you_ going to sleep?”

Keith shrugged and began the trek to his bedroom, which was the closest to the living room but felt like the farthest away with the weight on his shoulders. When he got to bed, he lay there checking his phone, just in case there was a layover or in-flight WiFi that would allow Lance to message him on Skype or Facebook.

Keith fell asleep waiting.

****

When classes started again on Wednesday, Lance was texting him with very staggering consistency. He gave Keith a few sentences here and there, and there was one Skype call where he curled up in the corner of his grandmother’s guest bedroom and tried to talk about the beach and the warm weather there but instead ended up crying and hanging up. Keith wanted to reach across thousands of miles to pull Lance close and hold him until he wasn’t trembling anymore.

Keith felt helpless from so far away. He wasn’t sure how to talk to Lance like this, unsure if it was better to distract him from his feelings or to encourage him to talk about them. He knew for sure it wasn’t the time to bring up whatever this was between them—what Lance needed was his friends, and Keith was going to be that for him.

Everything else could wait.

**** 

Lance returned to school on the following Sunday night. His grandmother was not home from the hospital, but she was doing much better than she had been.

Lance had wanted to stay, but his mother had insisted on sending him back. Veronica had made the trip to Abuela’s with them, and she too thought it would be best if she and Lance went home to Illinois while Mamá stayed behind. It would be a lengthy process, but she was trying to convince Abuela to move to the States with them. Abuela’s only family in Cuba was her son, Arturo, who lived on the other side of the country and couldn’t afford to uproot his family.

Hunk was awake when Lance got back to the dorm, bent over his textbook and so focused that he almost didn’t notice when Lance slipped in. He looked up when Lance dropped his bag of clean laundry unceremoniously onto the floor.

“Hey,” he said. “Didn’t know you’d be back today.”

“I forgot to tell you,” Lance said, moving further into the room and unloading his backpack onto his desk chair. Kicking off his shoes, Lance climbed right into bed and burrowed under the quilt his grandmother had made, a patchwork of blue fabric with embroidered constellations for her little star boy.

He made it to his afternoon class the next day, and to his luck it was just a review day that didn’t require a lot of participation. By the end, he was exhausted again and spent the rest of the daylight hours curled up in bed. He ate applesauce for dinner, then burrowed back under the covers and tried to study.

His phone went off, buzzing against the wood surface of his desk. The number of vibrations indicated multiple text messages. Lance wondered who would be double-texting him at this time of night, so he glanced at Hunk.

“Can you see who that is?” Lance asked from beneath his blanket, which was draped over his head and shoulders as he flipped through his lecture notes from before break. Hunk picked up the phone from Lance’s desk and read whatever was on the screen.

“It’s Keith.”

Lance made a small noise of acknowledgement. He wasn’t really absorbing anything from the notes he was reading, but he pretended to be deeply invested in them anyway.

“Pidge told him you came back. He’s asking if you can talk. He didn’t say about what.”

At this, Lance turned. “How is it phrased?”

“ _Can we talk?_ ” Hunk shrugged, putting the phone back down on Lance’s desk. “Vaguey McVaugerson.”

Lance didn’t really feel like laughing, even though it was funny. He left it at that, returning to his notes for a few minutes before giving up on them, tossing the notebook onto his desk chair. The possible implications of ‘ _Can we talk?_ ’ reached in to grab his insides, pulling at him in a way that was insistent and demanding of his attention. He drew his comforter tighter around him, curling up in a ball with his back to the room, because that way he could stare at the wall instead of seeing Hunk’s concerned glances every few minutes.

Some time passed like that before there was a knock on the door, and Lance looked over.

“Who is that?”

“Probably that guy who borrows my notes because he’s high in class,” said Hunk, getting up and crossing the room. Lance watched as he cracked the door open to see who was there. Surprise seemed to strike his features before he schooled his expression to seem calm and unaffected. “Oh, hey, it’s you. Lance, I’m just gonna be in the hall, okay?”

“Whatever.”

Lance turned back towards the wall as Hunk left the room. He was back in a moment, perching on the edge of Lance’s bed.

“Hey, buddy,” he said gently. Lance sat up, still enveloped entirely in the blanket, and stared blankly back at Hunk. “Did something happen between you and Keith? I mean, besides when you went over to his place.”

Hunk knew they’d hung out over break and what their time together had entailed, but he didn’t know much else; the picture Lance had sent was without context and he only sent a few texts about it, mostly emojis. Hunk didn’t know that they hadn’t talked about what it meant yet, or that when Lance went away to Cuba, he had pulled back into himself and barely given Keith the time of day. He felt like there was no reason for Keith to be interested anymore; no reason for him to be interested in the first place. Lance had been pushing his buttons since day one. He was always trying too hard to the point of being obnoxious, and everyone knew it.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, pressing his mouth into a thin line to keep his lips from trembling too obviously. He didn’t try to stop himself because he was ashamed to feel, but rather because he was ashamed that he was so easily tearing up over something so insignificant. Something that was his fault, anyway. He wiped his face with his blanket. “It’s nothing, man.”

It wasn’t nothing. Despite feeling like he’d seen it coming, and knowing that he’d been through similar situations before, Lance felt crushed. He’d messed it up again. He _wasn’t good enough_ again.  It was only a matter of time before Keith realized, before he gently untangled himself from Lance’s life, before he went back to being a stranger.

“I just wanted to know if I should let him in or not,” said Hunk.

“He’s here?” Lance clutched the edges of his blanket. “Did you tell him to come?”

“No. I think he just wants to see you,” Hunk patted the lump beneath the covers that was Lance’s foot. “I don’t know what’s going on, Lance, but I think you guys need to work this out. It seems like it’s important to both of you.”

“I…I don’t think…” Lance’s words came out broken by the quivering breaths he took. “I don’t really think Keith wants to see me …I don’t know if we’ll work out after all, Hunk…”

“Hunk?” It was Keith’s voice, drifting through the crack of the door that Hunk had left ajar. He sounded worried, and Lance felt even more like falling apart. He sunk down into his pile of pillows, a sniffling mess.

“It’s okay, come on in,” Hunk said, projecting his voice so Keith could hear.

Lance wiggled his feet away from his roommate, lying back down and returning to his roly-poly position as light from the hallway spilled into the room. Lance watched Keith’s shadow move across the floor rather than looking at Keith himself. The door closed and the room was dark again, save for Hunk’s desk lamp in one corner. Hunk rose to meet Keith in the middle of the tiny dorm room.

“He’s not really feeling good today, which is pretty understandable with everything going on,” he whispered, but not soft enough that Lance didn’t hear. “I mentioned you were here and he just…started crying.”

“No I didn’t,” Lance mumbled, his words completely muffled by his blankets.

“I’m gonna go study in the lounge,” said Hunk. He moved through the room to gather his things, and then returned to Keith’s side. “Are you guys gonna be okay without me? I mean if this is the tail end of a nasty fight I should stay, but…I don’t think that’s what this is. It seems more like he’s overthinking things again, honestly.” 

“Shuddup, Hunk.”

“Is that lump of blankets speaking?” Keith asked, his voice soft. He laughed awkwardly and shuffled towards the bed. It made Lance ache. “Hunk, we’ve got this. Thank you.”

Lance heard the door open and close again as Hunk left. He felt the bed dip as Keith sat on the edge, shifting to shed his jacket and kick off his shoes. Keith’s hand roamed across the covers, pausing when he found the place where Lance began, gently probing at his calf muscle with his fingers.

“Hey,” he said. “Lance. Do you want me to lay with you?”

Lance finally peered out of the blankets to face Keith. His hair was pulled back in a fluff of ponytail on the back of his head. His face was drawn with worry. When Lance moved his leg, Keith’s hand hovered there before he lowered it reluctantly to the bed.

Keith tried again. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah,” Lance croaked.

“I heard you just now, when you said you didn’t think this would work out. Did you mean it?” Keith fiddled with a string that was unraveling from one of Lance’s quilts. He lowered his gaze, staring at his hand instead of at Lance. “I just don’t understand why you’d think that…I really do want to be with you, Lance. A lot. Why wouldn’t I want that anymore?”

He looked up at Lance, wide open and vulnerable, right on the edge of being hurt but not there yet. He seemed to know he was on that precipice and did nothing to back away from it, letting himself teeter there, giving Lance the power to decide if he fell. He didn’t want that power. He didn’t want to see Keith hurt, ever.

 Lance felt more warm tears rolling down his cheeks, and his face felt wet and sticky and ugly, but Keith leaned towards him anyway.

Unable to get words out through the sobs that seized his chest, Lance shifted closer to the wall to make room and opened up his blanket, draping it over Keith when he crawled up the bed. Keith’s hands were cold when they wiped away Lance’s tears—pointlessly, because Lance was still crying. He moved to wrap his arms around Lance’s shoulders, and Lance clutched at the front of his shirt to pull him closer.

Lance pressed his face into Keith’s shoulder, waiting for the flow of his tears to slow and for the feeling that crawled up his throat to subside. The circles Keith rubbed on his back helped it fall away faster, so Lance held on tighter. When he finally pulled slightly away to look Keith in the face, the fear had calmed to a pinch of worry between his eyebrows. He pressed a kiss to Lance’s forehead, a relieved sigh slipping through his lips and tickling Lance’s skin.  

“I’m sorry,” Lance said, his breath catching. Keith brought his hand to Lance’s cheek, stroking his thumb back and forth across the soft skin there, catching the new cascade of tears. “I’m so sorry. I fucked up. I didn’t talk to you that much while I was at Abuela’s, and I hung up on you, and I forgot to tell you when I was coming back even though I promised I would, and I hurt you. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Shh. You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s okay not to text people back sometimes, and I get it,” said Keith. “Shit’s stressful. You’re not good at stress. I just wish I was better at being there for you.”

“You’re here now,” Lance whispered. He pushed his fingers up through Keith’s hair when he kissed him, softly and deeply. He found the hair elastic at the back of the other boy’s head and unwound it, so that Keith’s silky hair was loose across the pillow. When Keith drew back from the kiss, Lance moaned softly in protest.

“I guess you like the mullet more than you thought.”

“Never. But I like you,” he said, catching Keith’s lips in another kiss. He was the one to pull away this time, and Keith huffed. “I’m such a mess, I can’t believe I almost ruined this.”

“You didn’t,” said Keith.

“I did. I made you think I didn’t want you anymore, because I thought…well I thought too much and suspected that you wanted to talk because you wanted to…to not do _this_.” Lance gestured between them with the loose hair elastic, which he then handed back to Keith. With the same hand, he rubbed at his itchy, swollen eyes—here he was, a disaster, and Keith looked soft and lovely just a breath away from him. “I was so afraid that you had realized you weren’t really into me.”

“I’m _very_ into you,” Keith said, low and husky and serious, and even though Lance’s eyes were still damp, it sent a little thrill down his spine.

“I guess I know that,” Lance said. “Everything is so shitty right now, my brain decided that I couldn’t have one good thing. Exams are coming up, Abuela’s sick, I don’t know what I’m doing…you seemed too good to be true, I guess. And when I convinced myself of that, it just really fucking hurt.”

“Lance,” Keith murmured his name, framing Lance’s face with his hands and squishing his cheeks inward a bit. Lance exhaled through his nose in that way that was like laughter, but only partially—his whole laugh had yet to be drawn out of him today. “I gotta tell you something really important now.”

“What is it?”

“I want you to be my boyfriend,” said Keith. He stopped squeezing Lance’s cheeks as he leaned in to plant a soft kiss on his lips. “Please be my boyfriend.”

“Okay,” Lance said, nodding, feeling more like he was present in his own body than he had since they’d gotten the call from Abuela’s neighbor. Keith’s gentle smile was like the shock that started his heart up again. He knew that not everything was fine, but _this_ was fine. It was more than fine. “Keith?”

“Yeah?”

“I missed you.”

Keith’s breath was soft against Lance’s face when he drew himself closer, tangling himself up in Lance’s blankets and in Lance’s limbs and in Lance’s life. They lay like that, pressed up against one another. Lance’s body was too awake, too aware of Keith’s solid warmth, to allow him to drift off even though he needed the sleep. Instead, he played with tendrils of Keith’s hair and whispered soft, happy things about his visit to Veradero and about Keith’s eyes and about how nice it was to see his family again.

“Hey,” said Keith, wiggling in Lance’s arms and looking around the room. “Where’s your phone?”

“Hmm, what?” Lance’s fingers were still in his hair, but Keith was slowly withdrawing himself from the cocoon they’d made on the bed, tucking each layer of blankets back under Lance as he rid himself of them. Lance still whined and reached out for him. “Baby, noooo. Come baaack.”

“Needy,” said Keith fondly, fully untangled now and climbing out of the bed. Lance flailed a hand towards him, trying in vain to draw Keith back into his embrace, but Keith merely caught his hand between his own and pressed a kiss to Lance’s fingers. “I’m gonna come back, I’m just looking for your phone.”

“Right there. Desk,” Lance gestured with a jerk of his chin, without letting Keith go. He watched as the other boy moved closer to the desk and stretched to reach the phone, one hand still caught in Lance’s. Once he had it, he quickly wormed his way back into the pile of bedding, his face lighting up in the blue glow of Lance’s cell phone. “What are you doing?”

“You took a picture that I want,” said Keith, bypassing the unsecured lock screen and finding Lance’s photo albums. He scrolled through some Veradero pictures and some selfies Lance had taken with his sister when they’d tried out makeup products the day after he’d visited Keith. When he found what he was looking for, his thumb touched it and it filled the screen. “This one,” said Keith, looking up at Lance through dark eyelashes.

“Oh, that one.” Lance watched as Keith smiled at the picture of the two of them. In the photo, Keith’s fingers were soft against Lance’s chin as he brought their mouths together for a kiss, both of them closing their eyes and sinking into it with ease. “I like that one.”

Before Keith could finish going through the steps of sending it to himself, Lance was winding his arms around Keith’s shoulders and pulling him into a kiss to rival the one pictured. He laughed when he pulled away and took his phone back when Keith was done with it.

“I’m adding this to my Keef album.”

“Really?” asked Keith. Lance caught his eyes, expecting him to be disgruntled at the thought of making the photo so public. But mostly he just looked surprised.

“Have to let the world know I have a super cute boyfriend,” said Lance, catching Keith’s lips in another kiss before turning back to the Facebook app as it opened on his screen. “I was also going to like, change my relationship status to say I’m with you. Only if you’re okay with it, of course.”

“I’d like that,” Keith said, snuggling into Lance’s shoulder and watching the screen as he scrolled through his pictures from that day and chose which ones to post. Lance couldn’t see his face, but he could hear a soft smile in Keith’s voice, which made his chest swell happily. “Nana will be so smug—she fucking called it.”

“I have never met your Nana, but I love her,” said Lance. Keith hummed against the skin that his shirt collar left exposed. He scrolled through the relationship settings, and when he’d selected _in a relationship_ , he began typing Keith’s name until the right person popped up and all he had to do was select him. “Dude, this is it. The world will know you’re gay for me.”

“I’m super gay for you,” said Keith in a monotone voice. “Such gay. Very rainbow. Wow.”

“Ooooh my God, never mind,” said Lance, but he was laughing. This laugh was whole, and real, and it poured out of him like rushing water, a cleansing force that was made stronger by the way Keith’s body shook with silent laughter beside his.

When the post showed up on his feed, Lance smiled, satisfied. He knew his phone would be blowing up with notifications of likes and comments, but they didn’t matter to him now—he tossed the device aside and shifted against Keith, latching onto his shirt and the smell of his soap and his very presence, reveling in the absolute bliss of it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ha, I bet you thought things were going to be ALL soft and fluffy for this chapter....oops.  
> I don't know about you but I'm a slut for the symmetry of this, how it begins with kisses and snuggles and then ends with them too. Idk that just made me super happy when I realized that was going to be the outcome.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, it's been forever. This chapter was literally inspired by my campus being covered in snow but I didn't finish it until May, which I think is a testament to the college life. I'm heckin swamped.  
> So, just to give a fair warning: there's a little bit more m-rated discussion in this chapter. Until then, it's fluffy as heck. Lots of smooching. Very sweet.
> 
> Edit: I split this chapter in half, since it was twice as long as all of the other chapters by the time I got through the edits I wanted. Looks like this is going to be a 13 chapter fic instead of 11...

Keith had never been a huge fan of snow. It wasn’t that he hated it, he just found it inconvenient. When the fluffy white flakes outside cast shadows on the walls while he exited his lecture on Monday morning, no fond memory of building snowmen or canceled school sprung to mind. Instead he recalled the foster home he’d been in when he was five, where one of the other boys had shoved snow down the back of his coat and laughed when Keith started crying.

Leaning against the wall outside the lecture hall, Keith dug his phone out of his bag to check his messages, finding that Lance had blown up his phone with notifications while he was in class. He’d gotten used to this, as Lance had been extremely chatty over text even before they were dating, but now he was also getting Snapchats on top of all the messages. He’d trusted Lance to hold his phone for a few minutes last week, and he’d immediately installed Snapchat and made an account for Keith. Not that he really minded—it meant lots of pictures of Lance, including dumb faces that he could screenshot and use later, as well as access to Shiro’s stories where he posted videos of drunk Matt.

He scrolled through the barrage of text messages he’d received first.

 **Lance:** Good morning babe

 **Lance:** Happy Monday. I don’t have a shift for custodial today. Do you work tonight??

 **Lance:** Babe look outside!

 **Lance:** Oh wait you’re in class. When you get out! Look outside!!

 **Lance:** It’s snowing!! I LOVE SNOW!

 **Lance:** Keith get pumped with me I love snow

Keith sighed and exited the messaging app, moving on to Snapchat. Lance had sent him three things, and there had probably been updates to his story—especially judging by how excited he seemed about the snow. The first thing in Keith’s inbox was a picture of a sleepy Lance still among his nest of pillows and blankets, and he’d put blue heart emojis all over the image. He’d also sent Keith a photo of the snow on the ground with their initials drawn into it, framed by a heart. The final snap was Lance on his favorite couch in the Union, captioned _when does your class let out baby I miss u_. His story was just a bunch of cute videos of him playing in the snow, courtesy of Hunk, and a mirror selfie of his big fluffy parka.

Keith thought that this boy might be the death of him.

By way of response, Keith took a photo of the snowy landscape outside the window. He figured it was self-explanatory and didn’t bother adding a caption. When he began his trek to the Union, his phone buzzed in his pocket but he ignored it in favor of paying attention as he weaved among other students coming and going from class, the walkways made narrower and more treacherous by snow and ice. When he walked into the building, finally, a gust of snow blew in with him. Flakes settled on his shoulders as he stomped cakes of snow off his boots. He took all of the wet floor signs into consideration, but still did not take caution as he made a beeline to their usual spot near the convenience store.

When he saw Lance sprawled out on the couch laughing at something on his phone, Keith felt the humdrum haze of the lecture hall lifting off of him. When Lance’s head lolled to the side and he noticed Keith, he seemed to grin brighter and bigger.

As Keith approached, he pushed himself up into a sitting position to make room on the couch. Keith dumped his bag on the nearest armchair and started unzipping his jacket. Lance’s expression devolved into something like bewilderment, and he stared at Keith as if he’d grown ears on the top of his head or something equally bizarre.

“What?”

“What are you _wearing_?” Lance demanded, rising to his knees on the couch cushion and reaching out for the sleeves of Keith’s jacket. With just a little added height, Lance seemed to tower over him, but he was anything but imposing as he reeled Keith in.

“My jacket. What does it look like?”

“You’re freezing,” said Lance, placing his warm hands against Keith’s cheeks. “This is not weather appropriate, Keith.” He gasped softly, fingers sliding up through Keith’s hair, which was damp with snow, and clasping over Keith’s ears. “Your poor ears, oh my God! This will not stand.”

Lance was drawing away, scrambling off of the couch to rummage through the pile of his belongings on the floor. He seemed to find what he wanted somewhere in the folds of his big navy coat, and he drew himself back up to stand in front of Keith, pulling whatever it was over Keith’s head, covering his eyes.  

“Lance, what the fuck?” Keith’s voice was sharper than he intended as he reached up and yanked the thing off his head. Lance flopped down on the couch and looked satisfied, even as Keith’s attitude problem made an appearance. Keith looked at the object now in his hand—a long, floppy stocking cap in various shades of blue yarn, ending with a pom-pom. “Oh.”

“Borrow it,” said Lance, looking up at him. He had dropped his grin in favor of some sincerity, so etched into the lines of his face that Keith felt he’d been crafted to look like that, like the universe had made him too big for his body so that he was perpetually open and overflowing, like only thing he knew how to do was to give, give, give.

Keith felt his face grow significantly warmer. He finished shedding his jacket and boots, crawling onto the other side of the couch with Lance, still holding the soft hat in his hands.

“So your ears aren’t cold,” Lance added, leaning in and leaning his forehead against the crown of Keith’s head.

“I have one, I just didn’t wear it today,” he said, without conviction. He didn’t really want to let go of it now that he had it. He knew that gestures like these were just part of who Lance was, but it felt like there was something more to it. Plus, he just wanted to hold onto it because it belonged to Lance.

“Still. Borrow it,” Lance insisted. “I have a hood.”

Keith looked around the Union, seeing only a few girls studying together in one corner and a kid slouched down in a chair on the other side of the large room. Hunk was rounding the corner to join them, bundled in an orange scarf that hid his smile as he waved at them, but Keith could see it in his eyes.

Satisfied with the relative emptiness of the building and the lack of attention on them, Keith tilted Lance’s face towards him and pressed a soft kiss to his lips that Lance seemed to melt into.

When he drew back, Hunk was sitting across from them, having removed his jacket and settled down with his homework. Lance made a soft sound of contentment and curled up even closer to Keith, his arms winding around his neck and his face pressed into Keith’s shoulder.

“Hey, why were you asking if I work tonight?” asked Keith, letting the other boy snuggle into him. He wasn’t sure what level of PDA he was really comfortable with, since his only former relationship had never been public in the first place. But this? This felt okay. This felt better than okay.

“I think we should do something,” said Lance, his voice slightly muffled by Keith’s shirt. “In honor of our first two weeks as boyfriends.”

“That’s not an achievement,” said Keith. “Unless you’re in middle school and the couple that’s been together the longest only started dating a month ago.”

“Fine, would you rather it be because this is the last week we have before we succumb to the hellscape of finals week?” Lance whined into his shoulder. “I just want to spend time with you.”

Keith kissed the top of his head. “Yeah. We can do something.”

Lance leaned away again and started making suggestions for what they could do, and it seemed like he was excited about every possibility.

“You wanna just come over for a movie?” asked Keith, realizing that he didn’t really feel like doing anything or spending a lot of money. If Lance really wanted to, Keith would probably change his mind to make Lance happy, but he preferred to be lowkey. At least for today, with the snow swirling through the air and the icy sidewalks and the paper he still needed to finish for history that he wouldn’t touch if he went _out_ with Lance tonight. “I can make Shiro drive us there and take you back.”

“Hmmm. Sure,” Lance agreed. “Though, I don’t know if we should even bother putting in a movie if it’s going to be like last time I came over.”

“Well, this time Shiro will be there,” Keith said.

Lance tipped his head back and laughed, the sound swelling up and filling the big room. Keith watched him, as enchanted as ever, with slightly parted lips. Lance caught him watching and pulled him into a sloppy kiss, which he broke off from only because he had started laughing again.

“What?” Keith asked, smiling through his confusion.

“I was gonna say how much I’d love to freak Shiro out like that but I’m worried he’d _die_.”

“You think he’s never caught anyone making out on our couch before? When Matt exists? I think he can handle it.”

**** 

Lance didn’t stop talking about the snow for the rest of the day. When he went off to class, he kept texting Keith about how pretty it was and posting about it on Snapchat. Eventually, Keith was also in class, but his phone buzzed constantly against his leg with notifications.

Lance was bouncing around in the lobby of the science building when Keith’s class let out, surprising him—usually he went back to his dorm after his class on Mondays, but today he met Keith there and walked with him to the Union to wait for Shiro.

“Babe,” said Lance, poking Keith with his socked foot. He was wearing avocado socks, and Keith thought they were ridiculous but also kind of cute. He grabbed onto Lance’s foot, just holding it a second before realizing there was no reason to hold onto Lance’s foot besides just to touch him, to bridge the gap that was between them on the couch now that the Student Union was busy between class periods. “Why are you grumpy?”

“I’m not grumpy,” said Keith, frowning. “I’m happy.”

“I’m not sure your face got the memo,” said Lance. As if reading Keith’s mind about the space between them, he scooted closer to fill it and draped his legs over Keith’s lap. Keith looked around, but he didn’t feel as wigged out by the display as he’d thought—instead, it felt like the thrill that lodged in his throat when he’d first jumped down from somewhere high, when he’d driven a go-kart too fast, when he’d spat in a bully’s face and dodged a punch by ducking and rolling away. It was like that rush of adrenaline without the danger, and he felt it course through him as he wrapped an arm around Lance’s shoulders and let him lean in.

The thought of people noticing them didn’t bother Keith. He _wanted_ people to notice; he wanted people to see them pressed up against each other, or holding hands, or even occasionally sharing a kiss, because those things made him happy and he shouldn’t have to hide it. Plus, he was a little possessive—he wanted people to know that Lance was his boyfriend, and he was Lance’s.

“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” Lance said, poking the crease that Keith’s smile made in his cheek. Keith turned his head to plant a quick kiss on Lance’s lips, which was followed closely by Lance’s bright laughter, which spread warmth all over Keith’s chest. He felt warm enough to walk out into the snow in nothing but a t-shirt and shorts, as long as Lance was laughing.

Eventually Shiro trudged into the Union, looking dreadful in more ways than one. Exhaustion dragged his eyelids down and slumped his shoulders. The snow and punishing winds drew his arms close to his body, plastered his hair against his head, soaked the thin fabric of his scrubs, under which he wore only a gray thermal shirt.

“This is why you should wear your coat,” said Keith as he and Lance gathered up their things to follow him out to his car.

“Says the boy who didn’t bring a hat today,” said Lance, flipping up the hood of his parka. “I had to give him _mine_.”

“You want it back?”

Lance groaned, “I told you to keep it.”

“Okay, I’m keeping it forever, it’s mine now,” said Keith, pulling the hat down over his ears and slinging his bag over his shoulder. “Hey, Shiro, like my new hat? It’s mine.”

Lance made an indignant sound and latched onto the back of Keith’s jacket, his chin digging into Keith’s shoulder as he leaned against him. The fur around his hood tickled Keith’s cheek pleasantly as he turned towards his boyfriend, checking to see whether he was ready to go. He’d put his shoes back on and was wearing his backpack, and when Keith reached for his hand, his fingers met scratchy woolen mittens instead of Lance’s skin. He didn’t know why Lance wore those, but he was glad there was something warm on his hands. Keith couldn’t say the same for himself.

“You’re getting mittens for Christmas,” said Lance.

“You already got me something for Christmas,” Keith countered. “Let’s go, follow the human icicle.”

Shiro mumbled something and turned around, heading back towards the parking lot. When they got to the doors, Shiro cringed and braced himself for the cold. Keith laughed at him, even though his reaction to the weather wasn’t much better. He was not like Lance, who snuggled up inside his coat and grinned brightly as soon as he stepped out into the snow. It wasn’t that Lance liked the cold, because he’d been complaining about the dropping temperatures for a while, but there was something about the snow that made him exceptionally happy.

Once they reached the car, Shiro hopped inside and started blasting the heat. Matt could be seen crossing the parking lot from the other side, coming from his last class of the day. Keith waved, and Matt shouted something that was lost to the wind—Keith decided he didn’t want to know. He brushed it off, following Lance into the backseat of the van. Once he’d buckled up, he held Lance’s hand between the seats while Lance hummed to whatever song was playing on the radio, turned down low to create background noise.

“Ew,” said Matt, wrinkling his nose as he climbed into the passenger seat. “Shiro, why are these turds in your backseat? Can’t you just leave them here?”

Keith kicked at the back of Matt’s seat, earning a loud and brash laugh.

“Hey, as the copilot, I say that hand-holding isn’t allowed on this spaceship,” Matt said, turning around in his chair and gesturing at where Keith had woven his fingers through Lance’s. “Boyfriends shouldn’t be allowed either. They make the copilot salty and jealous.”

Lance smiled charmingly and used his free hand to point a finger gun at Matt. “Jealous that he has a boyfriend or jealous that it’s _this_ delicious string bean?”

Matt laughed again, filling the car with his cackling as they pulled out of the parking lot. Lance looked satisfied with himself, even though what he’d said had been entirely ridiculous—Keith even told him so, and it didn’t put a damper on his mood. He watched fat snowflakes spiral down from the sky and melt under the tires on the road, completely enchanted by a bunch of frozen precipitation in a way Keith didn’t understand but wanted to.

“Why do you like snow?” he asked, softly so as not to be heard over the music, which Matt had turned up. Lance turned, recognizing that Keith had said something, but not what he had said.

“Sorry, what?” Lance asked, leaning closer. Keith repeated the question, watching the puzzlement on Lance’s face break open into a grin. “Oh! That’s easy. It’s fluffy and pretty and reminds me of when we first moved here. I had just turned eleven. We played in the snow for hours, man. It was…it was magical.”

“What did you do?”

“Snowmen, snow angels,” Lance counted off on his fingers, “snowball fights when my ma wasn’t looking. You name it. We couldn’t get enough of the stuff. Still can’t.”

“I didn’t really play in the snow,” said Keith. “No one to play with, I guess? I don’t know.”

“Baby!” Lance gasped, dropping Keith’s hand to lift both of his palms to Keith’s face. He squished Keith’s cheeks together, looking horrified even as Keith’s mouth twisted into a squashed smile. “Baby, we have to fix that right now.”

“What? Is it another rite of passage like _Rocky Horror_?” asked Keith teasingly, prying Lance’s hands off but keeping them securely in his own.

“That is a _gay_ rite of passage,” Lance said. “This is just a childhood rite of passage, Keithy.”

“Stop saying ‘rite of passage.’ Also, don’t call me _Keithy_.”

“Okay, but seriously,” Lance went on, swinging their joined hands in opposite directions and then tapping them together in the middle. “We have to make snow people. And snow angels. And…I don’t know, just fun snow things! Keith, stop laughing at me!”

Keith shook his head, forcing himself to stop the laughing smile that kept creeping up on him. Lance’s insistence that the two of them, as college students and grown men, roll around in the snow together was funny to him. Funny and absolutely adorable, so that it both disarmed him and made his chest swell up with a pressure that was only alleviated when he smiled. God, if every day with Lance was like this, he’d probably explode. Could happiness work that way? Could you become too full and just pop?

“Trust me, by sundown you’ll love snow as much as I do,” said Lance.

Or he’d love snow because Lance loved it, because it put that look on his face and that bounce in his step and caused him to bundle up in his stupidly cute parka. Keith didn’t mention any of this, just kissed Lance despite the dry-heaving sounds that Matt made in the front seat and the soft, approving chuckle coming from Shiro.

When they pulled into their parking spot at the apartment complex, Lance hurtled out of the vehicle and ran off towards the courtyard between the two buildings, shouting over his shoulder for Keith to follow. Shiro was saying something about not staying out too long because of the cold, but Keith wasn’t really listening—he was climbing out, hauling his and Lance’s bags with him to carry up to the apartment. Shiro watched him struggle, then rounded the car and took both bags from him.

“Dude, no,” Keith protested, but Shiro shook his head.

“Go,” Shiro said, gesturing towards where Lance had stopped before turning the corner of the building, looking windblown and beautiful as he waited for Keith to join him. “Have fun.”

“Thanks.”

Keith jogged over to Lance, who pulled his hat down over his eyes but leaned in to kiss him on the lips, but it was sloppy and disrupted by Lance’s laughter. Keith pushed the hat back up so he could see, taking in the sight before him as Lance flounced away through the mounds of snow, babbling on about picking a perfect spot before falling backwards, spread-eagle, raising a flurry of white around him as he hit the snow.

Keith stood there for a moment before trudging over to join him, dropping down into the snow beside him and effectively ruining his snow angel. Keith poked at Lance with his almost-numb fingers and earning himself a warm puff of breath and a kiss on the hand.

“You’re no angel,” he said. It felt like a lie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That was fun, wasn't it?  
> Okay, so Lance was so cute in this chapter and I love him.   
> I'm on tumblr btw, my url is ganseyisourking. It's a multifandom mess, proceed with caution.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS IS NOT THE SAME CHAPTER IT USED TO BE.   
> This is a continuation of the snowy chapter 10, now featuring a brand new, never before read scene in which Lance gets to think about how cute his boyf is

Lance felt weird under Keith’s gaze as he crossed the living room, wearing Keith’s clothes and toweling off his damp hair. They’d tumbled in through the front door after over an hour in the snow, where they’d built a snowman that Keith insisted was an old gay man named Reginald. Lance had gone along with it, thrilled because Keith had wanted to come up with the name and he’d scrunched up his nose while he thought about it—his cold, pink, lovely little nose that Lance always felt like kissing.

When it was too cold and too wet to go on any longer, the boys had given in and come inside. Now, Lance’s clothes were draped over the towel racks in the bathroom and he was wearing red plaid pajama pants that were too long on Keith and an oversized t-shirt printed with the logo from some place called “Mars Cheese Castle” that Lance had heard Hunk talk about before.

“Can you believe this is a real place?” he asked Keith as he settled on the couch cushions next to him, tucking his bare feet under Keith’s thigh. Keith was watching him carefully still, almost in a daze as he lifted a hand to touch Lance’s bent leg. “Keef.”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah, it’s a store. Sells cheese.”

“Stop staring at my leg,” said Lance, wiggling his body petulantly. “It’s weird.”

Keith held on tighter, dislodging Lance’s feet from under his leg and pulling Lance’s body further across his lap. Before Lance could protest or leap off of the couch, Keith’s fingers were probing at the place above his bellybutton—he’d figured out the day before where Lance was ticklish and was already exploiting it. Lance squirmed and squealed, slapping Keith’s hand away from his stomach. Keith only laughed, moving up to his underarms and then to the sensitive spot behind his left ear that tickled just if you blew on it.

Now, Keith was leaning over him, his upper body supported by one arm and maintaining an inch or two of empty space between them. Keith slowly maneuvered himself so that his whole body was above Lances, a knee between his thighs, his face still hovering just over Lance’s shoulder. But he wasn’t blowing on that ticklish spot anymore, but pressing the softest kiss there, making Lance gasp softly.

“People are home, Keith,” Lance reminded him. His heart wasn’t in it.

“Hmmm. They know it’s not safe to be anywhere near us,” Keith said. “Not with you _wearing my clothes_.”

“Oh,” Lance whispered. Keith laughed, his lips traveling down the column of Lance’s neck and then back up to his jaw, making the little smooching sounds as he went and pulling giggles out of Lance. “Keeeith.”

Keith planted a kiss on his mouth, effectively shutting him up.

They made out lazily for a while, Lance’s hands sliding up through Keith’s fluffy, feathery hair and delighting in the little noises his boyfriend made when he gently tugged at the roots. He nuzzled against Keith’s face when he wasn’t kissing it, and when he wasn’t doing that he was watching Keith’s eyes watch his, leaning into the hand at his cheek and the thumb tracing a line back and forth across his skin. Outside, it was cold and covered in whiteness, but here it was warm, and being with Keith and looking at Keith and kissing Keith made him happier than any actual weather could.

They untangled from one another long enough to watch one movie and start some homework before the storm outside really picked up, sending weather alerts to their phones and bringing Shiro into the living room on cautious feet.

He was visibly relieved to find them apart, Keith on the couch with his laptop balanced on his lap and Lance with his books and papers spread out over the floor. But not finding them in a compromising position only improved his expression minimally, as he still looked somewhat uncomfortable as he settled down in the armchair and looked at Lance.

“So, the storm is pretty bad out there,” Shiro began. Keith was slowly detaching himself from his work, which he’d been engrossed in when Shiro appeared. “Which means that the roads are bad, and, um, it’s recommended that people avoid driving on them if they can.”

“Oh,” said Lance. He knew what that meant but the real implications were taking longer to process.

“I’m okay with driving if you want—I’m good at it, really,” said Shiro reassuringly. “If you really want to go home, I’ll take you. But you’re also welcome to stay.”

Lance could only wonder if Keith would really want him to stay. Was it really Shiro’s place to invite Keith’s boyfriend to sleep over without first talking to Keith about it? Wasn’t it very early in their relationship to even talk about such a thing? Realistically, Lance knew that sharing a bed and literally sleeping wasn’t that big of a deal—hell, they’d technically done it, but that had been more of a nap.

“I think you should,” Keith said, interrupting Lance’s thoughts. He whipped his head around to see that Keith had closed his laptop and was now watching Lance intently. “For safety’s sake. But. Uh. It’s obviously up to you.”

Lance nodded, still feeling like someone had hit his mute button. Sometimes when his mind started racing like it was now, his mouth raced along with it, talking off the ear of whoever was there. But the thoughts that bloomed in his head now weren’t things he wanted to talk about, especially not in front of Shiro.

“Okay,” Shiro said. “You both have a class at eleven tomorrow, I can take you then. If they’re not cancelled.”

Lance was nodding his agreement. Closing his book. Sitting up. Thinking about how he was wearing Keith’s clothes and how maybe Keith would want to take them off. Watching Shiro stand and head back to his own room while he wondered whether Keith would want to be touched or kissed in new places. Lance didn’t know how he felt about giving him that—he hadn’t had time to think beyond what they’d already done, kissing softly and kissing frantically and letting their hands roam a little, sometimes a lot. He’d never felt unsatisfied, had never felt a need to progress further; Lance thought they were going slow, but was Shiro under the impression they weren’t? Was Keith?

Lance swallowed thickly and turned to look at his boyfriend, who was watching him with raised eyebrows as he drummed his fingers against his closed laptop. Keith didn’t just look curious about what Lance was thinking, he seemed ever-so-slightly amused, which made a little bit of panic flare up in Lance’s core. Was Keith smiling that way because he was thinking he’d get lucky in some way tonight, and expecting that Lance was on the same wavelength? How would he break it to Keith that he was freaking out a little bit about the implications of staying, that he wasn’t uninterested, but he wasn’t sure he was ready either? Would Keith laugh at him then?

“Lance, that’s your thinking-too-much face, isn’t it?”

“My what?” Lance asked. His fingers curled and uncurled against the floor, looking for something to grab onto but finding nothing. Keith slid the computer off of his lap and got up, sitting on the floor next to Lance.

“Are you freaking out?” he asked, lifting his hand as if to card his fingers through Lance’s hair but pausing, waiting for an indication that it was wanted. Lance nodded, leaning in. “Hmm. What about?”

Lance closed his eyes at the feeling of Keith’s fingers sliding through his hair, which had dried fluffy and a little wavy like it always did when he didn’t blow dry it. He thought about the little gentle touches that he was growing so used to, and how it had been a while since he’d dated anyone who bothered with that. Lance showed physical affection liberally to most of his friends, but it was louder, more playful. He still did that with Keith, but there were also quieter things—alongside the kisses, they held hands and touched each other’s hair and Keith was allowed to blow on Lance’s ticklish spot. 

Other people he’d dated—and he hadn’t really “dated” them—didn’t even know about that spot. They knew how to kiss him with too much tongue, how to grab his ass, how to make him feel a little bit used. Senior year, there was a guy who was still hashing it out with his internalized homophobia, who was sweet when no one was watching but who didn’t even look his way when he smiled at him in the hallway. His first year at Altea, there was a girl who made out with him at a party but wouldn’t date him because she thought bisexuality was really just a stepping stone to gay. Lance let it all happen, telling himself it was for the sake of experimentation, of playing the field, but really, he was giving all his love to people before they proved that they deserved it. In the middle of the spring, he’d cracked, upending his accumulated baggage onto the floor in front of Hunk, and together they’d sorted through it. He now had a clearer picture of what he did and didn’t want in his love life, how unhappy he’d been pursuing people who wanted casual, physical relationships instead of deep, emotional bonds.

“This is serious, isn’t it?” he asked, instead of spilling everything into Keith’s lap. He wasn’t sure if this was the time for that. “You and me.”

“Fuck, Lance. Yeah. Yeah it is,” said Keith. “I was kind of gone for you almost right after I met you.”

“You wouldn’t mind, then…being slow about it? I mean, um, _taking it slow_ ,” Lance dropped his gaze to his closed book and played with the fraying corner of the cover. “I, uh, don’t think I’m ready for…”

Lance looked up to see Keith’s cheeks flushed and his eyes widened a bit in surprise, but he was nodding. “Yeah, yeah, that’s good. Taking it slow. Uh. I wasn’t thinking…”

“Oh, I wasn’t either! I just. Um.” Lance chewed on his lip. “I guess everyone before you were kind of _not_ serious about me, so all the things we did together were rushed and kind of meaningless. I just wanted us to be different. Special. Worth something more than just fooling around, you know?”

“Okay.”

“That doesn’t bother you, does it? That I’ve done stuff with other people?” Lance asked, his voice rising in pitch again. “I figured you knew because I’ve mentioned…”

 “No, it doesn’t bother me.” Keith kissed him on the forehead. “You know, there’s no pressure. Ever. Plus, I haven’t really done anything more than kissing, so…yeah. I’m not ready for more than that either.”

Lance let himself relax, lifting a hand to stroke the side of Keith’s face. Part of him dreaded the eventual conversation that they’d have to have, but he knew he wanted Keith to know about how his dating life had left him feeling all used up, and Keith was new and rejuvenating and right for him in every way. Keith whom he could love, not like how he loved everybody but in a way that would be unique to Keith, and he’d _love Lance back_.

Hopefully, anyway.

“I’m glad we talked about it,” said Lance. “I’m sorry I thought…I don’t know what I thought, I just knew that sleeping at your new boyfriend’s place often implies a lot, and that was what freaked me out. I mean, like, this is so new!”

“I’m sorry you felt pressured. I only asked you to stay because I want you to safe,” Keith said, pushing Lance’s bangs away from his forehead and letting them fall back, repeatedly running his hand over the top of Lance’s head before finally leaning in for another kiss. This time, he pressed his lips softly against Lance’s in what was probably the most chaste kiss yet. “You feel better?”

“Yeah.”

“You can sleep on the couch, if that’s what you’re comfortable with. This doesn’t have to be _anything_ ,” Keith said. “I have extra pillows, and Shiro’s old Pokémon comforter is in a closet somewhere—that’s one of the warmest blankets we have.”

“No, no,” Lance shook his head, leaning even closer to Keith and pressing up against him in something resembling a hug, but with his arms tucked close to his chest while Keith’s opened up to him, letting Lance fold himself up in the space between his arms and legs. Lance pressed his face into Keith’s hair and smiled, delighting in the warmth and the smell of Keith and how much better it felt to not be expected to do anything but this. “I wanna snuggle.”

“Snuggling sounds good.”

“No, Keith, snuggling sounds _fantastic_.” 

 ****

Lance cracked one eye open with some difficulty, as his eyelid was weighed down and crusted shut with sleep. The sunlight was bright and unfiltered on his face, bouncing off of the white landscape outside and pouring in through the half-open blinds. Lance groaned, closing both of his eyes tightly again, but the white light still shone behind them. He and Hunk always made sure their blinds were closed before going to bed for this exact reason; Keith, apparently, didn’t care if he woke up to being roasted alive.

_Oh,_ thought Lance, _that’s right._ He was in Keith’s room, wearing his pajamas and draped in his blankets. Lance pressed his face into the pillow he was using, inhaling the faint smell of Keith’s shampoo, wiping the last of his grimace from his face. He turned on his side, opening both of his eyes to take in the sight of a sleeping Keith.

The boyfriend in question—even after a couple of weeks, Lance still experienced a little thrill in calling Keith his boyfriend—was sleeping on his stomach with half of his face squashed against the mattress, his pillow abandoned in the corner of the bed. He was a sloppy sleeper, having pulled out of the loose embrace they’d started in and switching through a catalogue of positions as he slept. Lance had been dimly aware of it while he was still falling asleep, but Keith had rolled far enough away that he didn’t bother Lance with all his wiggling.

Lance smiled fondly. Even when Keith was like this, maybe _especially_ when he was like this, Lance was smitten. Drooling, softly snoring, _beautiful_ Keith. A few months ago, Lance would never have thought he’d be where he was now, falling more and more in love with the same boy who’d left a bitter aftertaste in his mouth when they’d met.

Lance rolled out of bed to close the blinds, shrouding the room in blissful dimness before he took his phone from its place next to Keith’s on the bedside table. He checked the time—8:37—and snapped a picture of Keith before he stirred, groaning a little as he rolled onto his back and onto Lance’s side of the bed.

“Hey! I was going to go back to sleep,” said Lance, dropping his phone back on the nightstand and moving to push Keith back to his own side. When Keith wouldn’t go, Lance sighed and crawled over him, snatching Keith’s pillow and settling into the spot he’d vacated. This side of the bed smelled even more like Keith.

Lance didn’t go back to sleep right away. He intended to, but he was distracted by Keith’s profile against the little light that still managed to sneak in between the blinds; his face was more relaxed in sleep, the tension in his brow smoothed out and his lips parted. One of Keith’s arms was outstretched between them, his palm open and fingers gently curled. Lance couldn’t resist taking his hand, which instinctively tightened around Lance’s, and pressing it to his lips once before he let himself drift off.

He woke again to a squeeze of his hand and Keith’s voice, saying his name. He opened his eyes to see that Keith was facing him, awake and looking at Lance with a softness to his face that disarmed him in the best way. 

“G’morning,” Lance mumbled, feeling warm all over under Keith’s gaze.

“Morning,” said Keith, shifting closer and cradling Lance’s face with his left hand, the right still loosely twined with Lance’s. He leaned in for a kiss, and Lance didn’t care for the hot morning breath that puffed up between them or the sour taste in his mouth, but it was all worth the feeling of Keith’s lips on his. “Your hair is a mess.”

“My hair is gorgeous,” Lance said indignantly, huffing as Keith lifted a hand to smooth down his hair, which was mussed from sleep.

“It’s _fluffy_ ,” said Keith with reverence. He let go of Lance’s hand to slide both of his hands through the waves of his hair, gently so that his fingers didn’t catch on tangles and tug at Lance’s scalp. Lance forgot to act bothered that Keith had called his hair messy, because the way his fingers felt massaging against his scalp was too divine.

Lance sighed and closed his eyes, relishing in Keith’s touch. He wouldn’t say that everything about this morning was bliss, but it was close—Keith had a way of making him feel like that, so full of bubbling happiness that he felt like he was filling with helium and would soon float away.

“You’re so cute,” Keith said, pulling Lance down to earth and back to the warmth of his bed. “I could stay here forever.”

“Hmm. Me too,” said Lance. He draped an arm loosely around Keith’s waist and pulled him in, pausing when they were nose to nose. “I’m happy I stayed.”

Keith kissed him deeply, and Lance really did want to stay there forever, in this moment. They were kissing, and Keith was at his softest, the memory of Keith in sleep still fresh and the image of what he’d be like later hovering in the distance. Keith was often grumpy, sometimes even when he was in a good mood, if that was possible. He was passionate in all senses of the word—he cared about things, was motivated in his studies, radiated joy when he did what he loved, and was quick to temper when something upset him. All of these sides of Keith—sleepy, soft, grumpy, gentle, nerdy, and angry—meshed together into a whole person, with sides Lance hadn’t even seen yet. He wanted it all.

Keith pulled away from their prolonged kiss, his smile shrinking for a moment as a thought struck him.

“Wait,” he said, confused. “Didn’t I fall asleep on that side?”

Lance laughed and kissed the wrinkle that formed in Keith’s forehead.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is new! Brand new!   
> Some of the dialogue is taken from what used to be ch. 11.   
> This is not a fun chapter for Lance and Keith, but it was hella fun to write. I had a hard time ending it.

On the precipice of finals week, the early bliss of their relationship morphed. The smooth sailing of the first two weeks was confronted by the roadblock that was the stress of exams. Testing started the next day, and everyone was getting in as much studying as they could stomach, individually and in groups. Lance already felt like he hadn’t seen Keith in ages, and it had just been two or three days.

Lance had spent part of the morning in a session with Shiro, figuring out what he needed to prioritize, what methods he’d use to study, and how much time he’d have to breathe in between. As soon as he’d arrived at his dorm, he’d started working, and in a few hours, he had completed a chunk of paper revisions and made notecards of key terms for an exam tomorrow. He felt good about his retention, how he knew most of them now just from rewriting the information, and he would just have to study them again later to really remember it all.

Lounging in bed on his phone, Lance hummed a song he’d been listening to while studying, and the information felt even stronger in his memory. For once, he felt like he really had everything in the bag.

His phone buzzed in his hand as a text from Keith came in, asking if he wanted to hang out and do some light studying. Lance loved the idea; he’d been productive all morning and deserved to see his boyfriend, and maybe even be a little more productive while they were together. He texted Keith back, suggesting they meet in their favorite corner of the library. It wasn’t the silent level, where they wouldn’t be able to talk much, but it wasn’t the front of the library where you could always hear the crowds and coffee machines of the café.

Lance packed his notecards, threw on his coat, and bounded out of the dorms, stopping only to hold the door open for a group of girls coming back from the cafeteria.  He made it to the library before Keith, dropping his stuff at the spot before heading back to the front to grab coffee and a snack. When Keith entered through the library’s main doors, Lance spotted him from the café and waved, weaving through people with a bag of cookies in one hand and a drink carrier balanced in the other.

“You got me coffee?” Keith asked incredulously as Lance made it to his side. He was wearing a hoodie over the same stretched out shirt he’d had on the day Lance had accosted him with all of his competitive bullshit. He remembered the moment fondly, even if it was a little embarrassing now.

“You look like you need it, honey bunches,” said Lance, taking Keith’s cup from the carrier and handing it to him. Keith frowned and took it.

“Thanks.”

“It’s nothing,” said Lance as they made their way into the library, to their perfect spot between the shelves, where there was just enough noise but not too much, where they knew they were surrounded by other people but it still felt like a little island they had all to themselves.

Lance put his cup and bag down and turned to Keith, who was unloading his things. Before either of them could sit down, he rounded the table and crowded himself into Keith’s space, cupping his face in one hand and kissing him in greeting. Keith made a little sound into his mouth, a little stunned by the edge of desperation that slipped into the kiss, because Lance had just missed him _so much_.

When he broke the kiss, Lance whispered, “Hi.”

“Hi,” said Keith, kissing the hand that Lance had pressed to his cheek before pulling away. He sat down at the table and spread his notes out before him. “I’m glad you agreed to this. I really needed to get out of the apartment—Matt’s being obnoxious and I kind of needed some quiet, but I’m going a little crazy staying in my room all day.”

“What are you working on?” Lance asked, settling down in his own seat and leaning on his elbows, peering at Keith’s notes. “Oooh, is that pre-calculus?”

“No, not ‘ooooh’. This shit is the bane of my existence,” Keith said, opening his notebook to a clean sheet of paper and laying out a sheet of practice problems. “But I need a math course above a certain level or whatever, so here we are.”

“Ah, yeah. I tested out of taking math, since I pretty much took it all in high school,” said Lance. “Unless I pick a major where I have to take more math, but I’m not really leaning that way.”

“Lucky you,” Keith muttered, setting to work on his problems. He seemed stressed, and Lance didn’t know how to put him at ease. He’d thought this meetup could serve as some much-needed stress relief, but Keith was diving into his work almost as soon as he’d arrived.

Lance pulled out his stack of notecards and started flipping through them, starting with the definition side up and murmuring the answers to himself. He made it through half the pile before looking up at Keith again, who was tapping his forehead with his pencil.

“You look cute when you’re concentrating,” said Lance, nudging his leg with one foot. Keith grunted. “Really, you do!”

“I don’t look cute,” Keith replied. “I’m smelly and tired and this shit is driving me insane.”

“Do you want to talk through it?”

“No, I just. I just need to do these problems,” Keith said with a sharp exhale, pushing his hair back from his face in a gesture that seemed frustrated. Lance sat back in his chair, his hands tied for the moment—he’d tried being sweet and sappy, he’d tried offering help, and Keith still seemed really distraught.

So, Lance did what he did best. He talked. Keith had always said he liked listening to Lance, and there was a lot to talk about since they’d been apart for a while, so he figured it might help alleviate some of the tension. There’d been something hanging in the air since he’d walked up to Keith, tension that Keith was carrying with him and throwing into the space between them. All Lance was trying to do was massage out the knots.

He rambled about his paper, half-complaining and half-enthusing. He talked about his plans for Christmas. He was getting around to talking about a spark of inspiration he’d had, when scrolling through the schools list of majors because he had to choose one soon; he wasn’t sure yet, but the more he thought about it the more he felt like he’d found the thing he wanted to do for the rest of his life. 

“And you know, since I—”

Keith cut him off midsentence with a gruff, “ _Shut up_.”

Something in Lance fizzled. His mouth opened and closed, the air needed to form his next words punched out of him. It took a moment to regroup, and instead of showing Keith where it hurt, Lance decided to play it off.

“Okay, sourpuss,” Lance said, with feigned brightness. “I should probably get back to work, anyway.”

Keith didn’t seem to hear the way his voice wobbled at the end of his sentence, didn’t seem to take it for what it was—a waving white flag. He threw his pencil down and glared heatedly at Lance, repeating himself, “Could. You. Just. Shut. Up.”

Lance blinked, and Keith was standing up, gathering his things and shoving them haphazardly back into his bag. He zipped it closed with a violent tug and dragged it along with him as he stormed off through the library. For a second, Lance sat there, feeling dejected and alone and stupid. _So stupid._

Only for a second. He decided, after that, that he wasn’t going to let Keith get away with it. He knew enough about healthy relationships that it wasn’t healthy to leave someone feeling like that, no matter how much of a mess Keith was himself. He knew enough to know he deserved to be heard.

Lance took up his things, tossing his trash in a nearby can and shoving his notecards in his coat pocket, and hurried after Keith.

Keith was right outside when Lance burst through the library doors, a rush of cold air in his face and heat in his blood.

“Hey, not so fast,” Lance said, stomping to Keith’s side. “What the hell is your problem?”

Keith didn’t stop, and Lance kept pace with him, striding through the quad. It was snowing gently and the few students that were out were meandering calmly between the library and academic buildings.

“You can’t shake me off,” said Lance sharply. “I’m not a pest, okay? So don’t treat me like one.”

“Why?” Keith demanded, whirling on Lance. His eyes were all fire, and Lance felt the destructiveness in him before he finished what he had to say. “You’re being one. I try to make time for you even when I have to study, but all you do is talk my fucking ear off about shit I can’t afford to care about.”

Flames lapped at the wallpaper, curling it at the edges, blackening it to soot. The foundation creaked, the ceiling collapsed. Lance felt so small and helpless, crushed under the beams. Around him, everything was bright white snow, a stark contrast to the carnage Keith’s words left behind.

“I thought…” Lance gasped, choking on a sob. “Fuck. I thought you cared about me. I thought you cared about what I have to say.”

“You’re twisting my words.”

“I’m not, Keith. You _just_ said you _don’t care_ ,” Lance cried. He was sure that they were drawing some attention now, but he couldn’t bring himself to care that people were watching. “You don’t get to treat me like I don’t matter, Keith. I’ve been through enough of that.” 

“Oh, fuck off,” Keith said, rolling his eyes and glaring up at the sky, a dull grayish blue bordered by the bare limbs of trees. “This is so not about that. This is about me not being able to focus and you not taking anything seriously. I _told_ you I needed some peace and quiet, but you just kept talking and talking and talking, Lance! This final is kicking my ass, and I told you that I needed to work on it, but _maybe that doesn’t matter to you_.”

“You never acted like it was that serious, you said, you said,” Lance had scrambled to get out his phone and read the text, “‘ _Do you want to hang out and study a little?_ ’ Not that your entire academic career is apparently riding on what you get done today! Excuse me for treating it like boyfriend time and not super serious math time.”

“You know what? This is dumb. This was all a dumb idea,” Keith said. He adjusted his backpack and avoided Lance’s eyes. “I’m going home. Talk to you later.”

Lance clenched his teeth and muttered, “Fine.” But it wasn’t fine. He hadn’t felt like this since before Thanksgiving, before he and Keith were together, and this time it was even worse. What did he mean, it was _all_ a dumb idea? Getting together today, or getting together in the first place?

And then, Keith turned and left, a retreating figure that Lance watched until he couldn’t see him anymore.

Lance went back to his dorm, the fight draining out of him as he trudged along the campus paths. He’d been angry, so angry that Keith had lashed out at him like this. Now the only feelings he could muster were guilt and fear and hurt. When he made it through the door of his room, he dropped everything he was carrying on the floor and crawled into his bed, curling into a ball under the covers and staining his pillow with tears.

When Hunk came home and found him there, he made Lance a cup of tea and coaxed the details of what had happened out of him. He didn’t seem as concerned for the fate of their relationship as Lance was.

“Couples fight, Lance. It’s impossible not to disagree every once in a while,” he said, patting Lance’s shoulder.

“I should’ve known, though. I shouldn’t have pushed him,” Lance said, worrying the corner of his blanket between his fingers. “If I knew how to shut up, then…”

“And you do, you just didn’t realize that’s what he wanted. He was wrong to be such a dick about it,” said Hunk, exhaling sharply in frustration. “Part of me wants to give him a piece of my mind, tell him he doesn’t get to talk to you like that.”

“Hunk,” Lance warned, nudging Hunk’s shoulder with his. Hunk smiled warmly,

“I know, I know. You don’t need me to protect you all the time,” he said. “But you’re my best friend, dude. It hurts me to see you hurt, even if I don’t think Keith really meant to hurt your feelings that badly.”

“I _know_ he didn’t mean to. He’s really overwhelmed, and I thought I was helping, but…”

“It’s going to be okay,” Hunk assured him. “He’s going to talk to you later, right?”

“Right.” 

“Are you afraid of what he’s going to want to say?” Hunk asked. Lance nodded, picking his mug up again and sipping slowly from it. Hunk’s hand moved from his shoulder to his back, a comforting touch not unlike what his mother did when Lance was upset. “I think it might be a little uncomfortable to talk about it, but it’s important that you do, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

When Keith called later, in the middle of the night, Lance hesitated before picking up on the third ring. The second the call connected, Keith was talking.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said. “God, Lance. I’m so sorry. I thought you weren’t even going to answer, I fucked up so bad. I was such an asshole.”

“I pushed you to that place, though,” said Lance. “You’re not the only one who messed up.”

“No. You didn’t do anything wrong. You were just…being you,” Keith said, sounding pained through the phone. “I never asked you nicely to be quiet, and it wasn’t your fault that I snapped. It’s not an excuse, but…I was just so freaked out over this exam and didn’t know how to deal with it. I realize now that you even offered help—you would’ve helped me with the work, or just let me talk about what was bothering me, and I didn’t _listen_ to you.”

“I thought me talking would help, too,” Lance said quietly, staring at the place in the couch where someone had duct-taped a tear in the fabric. He’d taken the phone call into the empty lounge down the hall, so as not to disturb Hunk’s studying. “I don’t know why, I just thought you needed a break.”

Keith laughed shortly, surprised. He sounded softer, less flustered when he said, “I probably did. You’re so good to me, and today I made you feel like shit. I never wanna do that again, Lance, but I don’t know how. Every time I think I’m doing things right…”

“Shhh,” Lance murmured, hearing the break in Keith’s voice. “You’re okay, don’t beat yourself up so much. We just have to communicate better, okay? I won’t know what you need if you don’t tell me, and you won’t know how things make me feel if I don’t tell you.”

“You did a good job of telling me today,” said Keith. “I just didn’t want to hear it. I’m sorry I said all those things to you, I didn’t mean them. I do care, I care about you so much, and I want to hear _everything_ you have to say. Even if it’s small, I want to hear it. And you’re right, I need to talk about how I feel, too.”

“Anything you want to get off your chest right now?” Lance asked gently, picking at the tape on the arm of the couch. Keith let out a breathy laugh.

“Other than how sorry I am?” he asked.

“You’ve communicated that pretty well already, I think.”

“Okay,” Keith hummed as he thought about what to say. “I guess I have some walls up? Alongside a bit of a temper. I think it comes from being left a lot as a kid. I’m just a little untrusting. It’s not that I really think you’ll…leave me. Or that I _want_ to push you away, I really, really don’t. I think I just get so scared and angry when I feel…I guess when I feel _forgotten_. It just kind of _happens_.”

Keith sniffled, and Lance’s heart felt like it was falling open. “Oh, baby, don’t cry. If you cry I’ll have to come over there so I can wrap you up in a Lance hug, and that’d be a long walk.”

“That’s too bad, I could use one.”

“Tomorrow. After our exams,” Lance promised. “I’ll give you the biggest hug I have. Thank you for sharing all that with me. I guess I’ve broken through your walls a bit, haven’t I?”

“Yeah, but all it took was you telling me you liked my shirt,” Keith said with a chuckle. Lance wanted to be there with him so badly, to kiss him and taste the laugh on his lips. Lance really wasn’t looking forward to this part of the holidays. He’d miss everyone in Altea over the break, but he’d miss Keith in a special way; Keith was the one he’d miss kissing and holding hands with and singing to when love songs came on the radio. “And being sensitive, funny, and caring about what I care about, and _cute as hell_. Seriously, you’re like a battering ram.”

“That makes me sound real charming, babe,” said Lance. “It’s what every guy wants to hear. _You’re like a battering ram_.”

They talked and giggled for a while, and Lance lost track of time. There was something vortex-like about listening to Keith’s voice in his ear, especially in the afterglow of making up and being honest and vulnerable. Even though he couldn’t see and touch Keith now, he felt so connected to him. He wasn’t happy they’d fought, but he was satisfied that they’d learned from it, and used the opportunity to gain a better understanding of one another.

The next day, Lance and Keith had exams at the same time, a few doors down from each other. They didn’t walk there together, but Lance spotted Keith right as he was about to walk into his classroom. Knowing there were other tests going on in the surrounding rooms, he abstained from shouting Keith’s name, instead waving obviously and enthusiastically from his end of the hallway. Keith waved back, a shy little movement of his hand before ducking into the room.

Lance went into his final shaking his head and smiling fondly to himself, all because of his silly, shy boyfriend.

When he turned in his test and slid quietly out of the room, so as not to disturb the few remaining classmates still taking the exam, Lance felt confident about his performance. He wouldn’t know for sure how he did until the grade was posted, but he knew he was going to pass.

He waited for Keith near the entrance of the science building, sitting on a low bench near a window. When he checked the time to see that the exam period had ended, he turned his gaze to the staircase that Keith would come down. He was itching to hold him, now that he’d promised he would—more than he wanted to be held, Lance wanted to feel Keith melt in his arms, to make him feel comforted and secure.

When Keith made his way down the stairs, his face was neutral and he was watching his feet as he descended. Lance stood, striding to meet him at the bottom like a fairytale prince, ready to sweep Keith away—

“Lance!” Keith exclaimed when he looked up and saw him. He bounded down the remaining half of the staircase, jumping to skip the last one, and barreled towards Lance. It was so sudden and so endearing that Lance froze in place, jolted into moving again when Keith landed in front of him and wrapped his arms around Lance’s shoulders.

“Hiya, baby,” said Lance as Keith nuzzled his shoulder, mumbling something against his shirt. “What?”

“Lance, I did it!” Keith announced, pulling back to beam up at Lance. The look on his face was so bright, relieved of the burden he’d been carrying and thrilled to have gotten through it. “I didn’t choke, or not know what I was doing, I just _did it_. And now it’s over!”

“Baby, that’s _amazing_.”

Keith grabbed his face and kissed him, quickly and sweetly, before untangling himself and heading toward the door. He was walking with his normal gait, but still he radiated happiness. Lance felt it in the core of his being. He fell in step with Keith and reached for his hand, twining their fingers together as they stepped outside into the cold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Returning readers, you might remember this fight from Pixels 1.0, where it's glossed over in the final chapter. I decided I wanted to write it as its own scene, and this happened.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is not entirely new, but the ending of the story is slightly different!  
> Because I went through and made edits to the entire story (this is now Pixels 2.0), the ending is chapter 13 instead of where it originally was. If you are only looking to read the major changes I have made, I suggest going back at least as far as chapter 7. If you just want chapters that are completely or mostly new, probably start rereading at chapter 11. You don't have to reread the entire thing, but I want to ease all confusion about what's going on.

Lance woke up to a gentle hand prodding at his shoulder, and a soft and croaky-sounding voice repeating his name over and over. He yawned and lifted his head from his arms, which had been a nice cushion and much better than laying directly on the hard surface of the library study table. Lance blinked as he pieced together the memories from before he’d fallen asleep in the library—it was the second to last day of finals, and he only had to hand in a hard copy of his paper before he was done, but he had decided to accompany Keith for one more night of light studying. Keith, whose voice he’d woken to, was sitting beside him and stacking up his index cards.

“Morning,” said Keith, the corner of his mouth turning up as Lance roused himself. “It’s almost one.”

“I think I was dreaming about you,” Lance said, putting on his dopiest grin as he took in the sight before him. The only drawback to the view was that Keith was spread so thin, chunks of hair falling out of the elastic he’d used to tie it back and his papers all over his side of the table, carefully skirting Lance’s sleeping spot. The week had been hell on everyone, but there was a bit of sleepy euphoria creeping up on Lance now that it was over for him, enough that he could look at Keith through rosy lenses and still find him wonderful when he was like this. “You came over for Epiphany and I gave you mittens and they had cats on them, and then I think they turned into cats? It was weird.”

“I want mittens that turn into kittens,” said Keith, and then he snort-laughed and Lance died a little because it was so cute. “It rhymes, Lance.”

“I know.”

“I’m so tired.”

“Same,” said Lance, reaching out and touching Keith’s hair, which wasn’t as soft today because he hadn’t washed it, but Lance liked it anyway. “I’m sorry I fell asleep.”

“Don’t be. You’re _cute_ ,” he said. Keith lifted his hand in the oversized hoodie he was wearing, which belonged to Lance, and wiped at Lance’s mouth. “Also, as hypothesized, you drool.”

“Stop being sciencey, I’m not an experiment. I’m your boyfriend.”

“Confirmation that science is gay,” said Keith. Lance shook his head and leaned back in his chair, spreading his arms out and making a loud noise as he stretched that made Keith smile. Lance’s good mood didn’t get in the way of the memory of how unhappy Keith had been earlier in the week when they’d honest-to-God _fought,_ right here in their favorite corner of the library.

“Hey,” Lance said. Today, Keith was studying for a much less stressful final and in a much better mood. They’d found a new rhythm for finals season, after the Fight: they studied separately or, when they were together between exams and work, they only studied casually or not at all. They never tried to get serious work done during what were technically dates, because the two didn’t mesh. Cautious not to disrupt their balance, Lance asked, “I wasn’t too distracting, was I? When I was sleeping?”

“No,” Keith said. “This wasn’t really serious stuff anyway, just…making sure I know it.”

“Okay,” Lance smiled and leaned over to kiss the side of Keith’s head. “I should head back, get some real sleep. Is Shiro coming to pick you up, or do you need to crash with us?”

“I think he’s sleeping. Is it okay if I sleep in your bed with you?”

Lance laughed. Sleeping next to Keith was great in his bed, where there was enough space that his restlessness didn’t bother Lance, but when it came to squeezing together on Lance’s narrow twin-sized mattress? That was a whole different story. They’d have no choice but to sleep tangled up together, with Keith shifting in is sleep every few minutes—though, admittedly, he seemed to move less when they slept so close. Realistically, Lance figured it was because Keith couldn’t move much, limited by the size of his bed, but something in him wondered…he wondered if the weight of another body beside him, the feeling of being held in Lance’s arms, calmed him even in sleep.

“Yeah, you can sleep in my bed,” Lance said, standing and moving behind Keith to fix his ponytail, a skill he’d picked up babysitting his niece. It was a gesture that came naturally to Lance, and Keith had never objected. Combing his fingers through Keith’s hair, he added, “Making you sleep on the floor would just be bad hospitality, wouldn’t it?”

“Oh, so it’s about hospitality?” Keith laughed, gathering up the last of his study materials and putting them away. “I thought maybe you wanted to snuggle.”

“Scandalous!”

“Lance,” Keith half-laughed, half-sighed as he got up out of his chair. “I’m too tired for this. Can we go?”

“You’re just eager to sleep with me,” Lance said, waggling his eyebrows in jest. Keith shook his head.

“You know what? You sleep here. Hunk will let me in and I’ll sleep in your bed _by myself_.”

 ****

Keith exited his last final exam and felt weightless. School didn’t start up again until almost February, which gave him a month of near freedom. He still had to work, and would be back at the diner mid-January, but for now? The biggest chore he had was packing to spend Christmas with Nana. He could play all the video games he wanted and catch up on his leisure reading, without having math and physics textbooks staring him down from a pile on his desk.

The only thing that he didn’t like about the upcoming winter break was the lack of time he’d get to spend with Lance. Having a boyfriend, having Lance specifically, was different than Keith had expected. It wasn’t all kissing and cuddling all the time, and although he wasn’t glued to Lance by any means, he felt close to him. Lance’s presence made Keith _so happy_ —he was warm and he had soft hair and as much as he made fun of Keith, he complimented him almost twice as often. He remembered an evening he’d spent with Lance, when Hunk was out of the room, where Lance had just kept kissing and squishing Keith’s face and saying nice things about him instead of paying attention to the Disney film that was playing on his laptop. He’d never thought he’d craved that kind of affection so much until he had it, and the doses that Lance gave him were a little addictive.

Keith stepped to the side of the door, allowing his classmates to flood out of the classroom while he stuck himself to the wall and powered up his phone. The professor had sternly reminded everyone to keep their cellphones off during the exam, and Keith had obeyed the rule just in case—now, he turned it back on to find several notifications. One of the grades from a previous exam was in, and he had an email from the professor about it, but Keith bypassed it in favor of reading the Facebook messages from Nana and a cousin Keith had newly friended, and then the several text messages he’d gotten from Lance while he was doing his test.

**Lance:** Good luck bae!!!

**Lance:** I know u will do fabulously ur so smart. Kiss kiss kiss kiss

**Lance:** Come see me as soon as you’re out!!! My fam is coming really soon and I have to see your cute face before I leave

Keith sent back an acknowledgement and put his phone in the pocket of his jeans, sliding back into the stream of students heading for the building’s exit. He made his way across campus just in time to watch from across University Drive as Lance launched out of the entrance of his dorm building and bolted towards one of the many cars parked along the curb.

Keith crossed the street, but hung back as Lance collided with the small woman who climbed out of the car, and then another, younger woman with pink hair in a long ponytail who came around from the other side. As soon as the girl pulled away Keith recognized her from photos as Lance’s sister Veronica. He was struck by the resemblance even more in person. All of Lance’s siblings looked like him, but Veronica’s features and expressions mirrored Lance’s so that it was almost uncanny.

Lance was talking a mile-a-minute about his finals and how relieved he was to be done with them, and how excited he was for the holidays, and his mother and sister where listening graciously with smiles on their faces. Veronica’s gaze shifted slightly, looking over the shoulders of Lance and his mother, spotting Keith where he was standing several feet away.

She grinned a very Lance-like grin before tapping her brother on the shoulder and pointing. Lance trailed off and turned toward him. For a brief second Keith wasn’t sure what he’d do. He didn’t know what Lance told his family about their relationship. Had he told them they were boyfriends, or just close friends? Had he even mentioned Keith to any of them but Veronica? But then again, he had outed them on Facebook, hadn’t he? Did Lance’s mother even have a Facebook?

“Keith!” Lance called excitedly, closing the distance between them in a few bouncy steps and grabbing onto Keith’s hand to guide him back over to where the two women were standing. “Guys, this is Keith.”

“He’s shorter than I expected,” said Veronica, smiling down at Keith. She was about Lance’s height, taller today because of the boots she was wearing. She was shark-like, Keith decided; intimidating as fuck but totally awesome. If in another life, Keith had had a sister, he thought she’d be like Veronica—if accounts of his mother were anything to go by, it wouldn’t be a stretch to think that someone could’ve inherited all of her badassery and none of her negligence.

“Shut up,” said Lance, making a face at her. Keith looked between them, still stunned into silence, but Lance was already moving on. “Keith, forget her. Let’s talk to Mamá instead.”

“Hi,” Keith managed, holding out a hesitant hand for Lance’s mother to shake. “I’m. Um. Keith.”

“So this is Lance’s new boyfriend! Oh, it’s so nice to meet you,” she said warmly, taking his hand in both of hers and shaking it enthusiastically. She smiled wide, her eyes crinkling the way Lance’s did. There was so much of his family in him; everywhere he looked, he could see the ironclad bonds that linked him with them. “Lance talks all about you! He is very happy to be with you.”

“Ma!” Lance blushed and tried to hide his face behind the hand that wasn’t still holding Keith’s. Mumbling, he added, “He knows that.”

“I didn’t know you talked about me,” Keith said, and Lance made a squeaky sound of surprise and brought both of his hands suddenly to the sides of Keith’s face. “What? I _didn’t_.”

“How could I _not_ talk about you?” Lance demanded, shaking his head as he gently tapped Keith’s cheeks with his palms. “You’re my super cute boyfriend! Even before you were my boyfriend, I thought you were so cool, so I might’ve also talked about you a lot then.”

“Might’ve?” Veronica teased. “Keith, when he was home for break, practically every other thing he said was about you, if it wasn’t about Hunk and Pidge. Or Frida Kahlo.”

“He does love to talk about Frida Kahlo,” said Keith, smiling as Lance proceeded to bury his face in Keith’s hair, half mumbling about being embarrassed and half laughing. Keith, emboldened by the realization that Lance’s family was well aware of Lance’s bisexuality and his relationship with another boy, let his hand casually rest at Lance’s waist. “Good to know he talks about me more than he talks about her, I guess?”

Everyone was laughing, and Lance was emerging from his hiding place to smile blindingly at Keith, and even better than the feeling of being happy with Lance was the way it felt to know that _he_ made _Lance_ happy.  

After they had all trekked up to Lance’s dorm to get his luggage and laundry, Veronica and Mrs. Fuentes climbed into the car to wait while Lance said his goodbyes. Hunk had already left that morning, and Keith had witnessed the big man almost start crying at the thought of parting with his friends even though he knew they’d all be back together soon. Pidge, however, was still packing up in their dorm when Lance and Keith went upstairs to say see-you-later. They were receptive to Lance’s hug, admitted they’d miss him, and handed him a present wrapped in mermaid-printed paper and demanded that he not open it until Christmas. They handed Keith a smaller package wrapped in the same paper, and it came with the same instructions.

Pidge and Matt’s parents were in the lobby with Matt when the two of them made their way back downstairs, overhearing Mr. Holt’s lament that Pidge was not staying in one of the university’s older, more architecturally fascinating buildings.

“Dad, there’s no air conditioning in the houses,” Matt was saying, but Keith didn’t catch the tail end of the conversation, because he and Lance waved hello but walked right by, out onto the lawn in front of Garrison Hall.

“Shit,” Lance said, standing beside Keith but not looking at him, instead staring at his family’s car. “Shit, I’m leaving. It’s over.”

“Hey,” Keith said as he reached for Lance’s shoulders and turned him gently so that they were facing one another. “It’s not that long, and as long as I’m at Nana’s we’re less than an hour away. Shiro already said I could borrow the car sometime, and I’ll drive the forty minutes to see you.”

“You’d do that?”

“Yeah, of course. You hopped on a bus for hours to see me, the least I can to is drive to fucking Bloomington,” said Keith, rubbing gentle circles into Lance’s shoulders, relaxing his muscles with the touch and his mind with his words. “That is, if you’ll have me.”

“Of course, you’re always welcome. It’s the Fuentes way,” said Lance, sniffling softly even though his smile was returning. “Keith?”

“Yeah?”

Instead of saying anything, Lance pulled him in for a tight hug, burying his face in Keith’s neck again. He didn’t let go for a long time, and frankly, Keith really didn’t want him to. He hugged back, still tracing circles on Lance’s back with one hand and clutching his jacket with the other. It was cold outside, but Lance was warm; holding him and being held by him was something Keith was going to miss a whole fucking lot.

When Lance finally drew back, Keith kissed him. He wasn’t sure how much he could pack into the careful, chaste press of lips but he tried, tried to make it say _goodbye_ , _I miss you already_ , _I’ll text you but it won’t be enough so I’ll Skype you to see you smile and hear your voice_.

They walked to the car together, holding hands until Lance had to fold himself into the backseat and had to let go. Keith drew back when the car door shut. Veronica started the engine and began to pull away, and Keith watched Lance fog up the window glass with his breath. He drew a heart, blew a kiss, and waved goodbye until Keith could no longer see him.

 ****

Keith stood on the balcony that jutted out from the back of the house, huddled up in a jacket that was too big for him because his had gotten wet playing in the snow with Lance and his niece and nephews. He’d swiped this coat from Lance’s room on his way to the door, slipping away from the loud music and laughter of the party downstairs. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Lance’s family—actually, he kind of loved them—but Keith had never been much for big groups of people or loud parties. He’d go back when he’d had enough time to breathe, probably.

But for now, he breathed in the cold air of the last night in December, let his cheeks and nose get a little numb, and thought about the year that was ending and the new one that was starting.

The door behind him slid open, and Keith turned to see Lance shoving his arms through the sleeves of his favorite parka and ambling outside to join him. He leaned backwards against the railing that Keith was standing at and inclined his head towards Keith’s.

“You hiding?” he asked. Keith shrugged, and Lance laughed softly, tilting his head back to gaze up at the navy blanket of the sky, sparkling with stars. “I turned around and you had just disappeared, and Luis said he saw you head upstairs, so…”

“I’m not doing a very good job of hiding if you found me,” Keith said, unfolding his arms and sliding a hand into his pocket to check his phone. It was 11:50, and he could hear the buzz of conversation downstairs picking up, excitement bouncing around the room at the thought that the new year was only ten minutes away. He showed Lance, who nodded. “Almost time. Did you want to go back down?”

“Nah,” Lance said. “I wish you would’ve picked the bathtub as a hiding place again, though. Much warmer in there.”

“Ha. Yeah,” Keith said, turning his body toward Lance’s warmth. He’d been out here at least twenty-five minutes, but Lance had just come from inside and had more heat. “That was a good time.”

“We bonded,” said Lance, leaning in. “I think that’s when this kinda started. For me, anyway. It was definitely when I decided I really wanted to be your friend, but it’s also the moment I think I started…you know. Feeling stuff? It just took me forever to realize that’s what it was, and instead of just liking you like I like everyone, I was actually _hardcore crushing_.”

“Hmm. I was kind of already developing a thing for you, even though you were kind of annoying,” said Keith, leaning in to Lance’s touch when his fingers came up to brush hair from Keith’s eyes. “But that night I found out how sweet you were, too. You know what I kinda wanted to do, then?”

“Hmm, what’d you wanna do?”

“This,” Keith said, kissing him. Their warm breath mingled, and Keith could feel his face again. “God, I had no idea last year that this was where I’d be now.”

“Me either. I was kinda in that hole I told you about, with people fucking me over and me not realizing I deserved better and shit,” Lance said, drawing back as he scratched his nose. “I, um. I’m _so happy_ now. It’s not just you, but you’re a part of it.”

“Yeah. I was in the process of figuring out what I wanted to do, because after high school I pretty much dropped everything to move here as soon as I could, you know? The family I was with was cool with me staying the summer but I just needed to get out,” Keith said. “Shiro’s my real family.”

“Oh! I’ve been meaning to tell you,” Lance exclaimed, suddenly brimming with excitement. “I think I know what I want to major in, and I just got an email from the registrar accepting me into the program.”

“What?”

An eruption of sound downstairs turned their heads, and Lance broke out in a grin.

“Guess it’s time,” he said, and Keith felt fingers curl in the fabric of his jacket as Lance pulled him impossibly close. Keith knew what he was doing and let himself be tugged into Lance’s space, lifting his hands to run his fingers up through Lance’s hair.

They kissed through the uproar that brought in the new year and continued after midnight had passed. They allowed their soft, tender kisses to deepen just enough that they were breathless when they stumbled back into the upstairs hallway. They had to compose themselves a little before returning to the party, and when they did go back, it was hand in hand.

Passing through the kitchen, Lance picked up a flute of sparkling juice and handed it to Keith before grabbing one for himself.

“To starting the new year together?” he asked, clinking his glass against Keith’s.

“I’ll toast to that,” said Keith. “So? Are you just going to leave me hanging? What did you choose?”  

“Oh, right! I'm going to go into elementary education,” said Lance, sipping from his glass. “Nothing has ever felt as right as this, you know? I have so many interests it was hard to pin down what I wanted to study, but then I realized I didn’t have to choose between them if I taught. Plus, I really want to be a resource for kids who speak Spanish as a first language, because that was me once upon a time.”

“That’s…that’s absolutely perfect, Lance. I’m so _proud_.”  

Lance’s grin broke the entire world and mended it all at once, it was that incredible.

“I kind of have you to thank. Just a little,” said Lance. “You made me realize that I could do what I loved, _everything_ I loved, and no one would think I didn’t love one thing enough. You told me that story about Shiro and why he picked PT, and I realized I wanted to do that. I wanted to help people like me, to be the person I needed when I was a kid.”

Keith tapped his juice flute against Lance’s again.

“To everything falling into place,” said Keith. He meant it wholly. Lance’s discovery was just one example. Keith felt like his life was falling into place, like he was finally ending up where he belonged; he belonged in so many places. The apartment he shared with his brother, his Nana’s house, the University of Altea, the Universal, and here, with Lance. For the first time, he felt almost certain that he’d never be alone again.

“I’ll toast to that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friends, this is the last chapter. This is the end.  
> I've put so much work into making this fic great. I'm so grateful for all of you who've been following it since the beginning, to those of you who were here when it ended the first time, and to those of you who are just reading it now!! I'm so glad that this story has been so well received and has readers that have encouraged me to keep it going and finally finish it (again!). Thank you sooooooooo much for your time, for your feedback, and for your kudos. It was your love and mine combined that made me come back to this story and edit it, and I might even make spin offs in the future if the mood hits. 
> 
> Let me know how you feel about the ending, I guess? What was your favorite part? If I were to write a oneshot or something in this universe *wink wink* is there anything you'd like to see? 
> 
> If you haven't, check out my other Klance fics maybe? I've got a couple completed single chapter stories and another multichapter AU in the works, so basically this is a shameless self-promo


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